Notices by Lori Emerson (loriemerson@post.lurk.org)

we are working on another @mediaarchaeologylab zine! this one is called "How to Take a Decade to Repair a Computer (and Why You Should Too)
" and it's written in the context of permacomputing, computing within limits, and degrowth 💚 hopefully ready to mail out this summer #othernetworks

would anyone be interested in hearing how CU Boulder faculty & staff might not get merit raises this year (keeping in mind that we are below the national average for salaries) but yet CU still paid $2 million for access to a version of ChatGPT that is about as good as the free version? anyone? #ruminating #ai

@tagomago @fanta you can still call the number too! I do it every once in awhile to give myself a little happiness https://giornopoetrysystems.org/dial-a-poem

finally, Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation--truly as relevant now as they were in 1987 #othernetworks

📡 at very long last, today is the big day! my beloved book, OTHER NETWORKS: A RADICAL TECHNOLOGY SOURCEBOOK, is officially available for pre-order!

This a speculative index of communications networks, a love letter to experimental art & technology, & a liberatory guide for escaping the corporate present. Many of you know that, for years, I have been compiling and cataloguing a history of communications networks, one full of alternatives to the monolithic, surveilled internet as we now know it. The result is this compendium of possibilities that existed before or outside of the internet and a tribute to their experimental use by artists, covering everything from pirate radio to barbed wire telegraph, from synthesizers that transmitted over the telephone to encoded messages bounced off the surface of the moon.

Because of the hard work and creative genius of Mark Iosifescu, Jesse Pollock, and everyone at Anthology Editions; Robert Beatty who made the breathtaking cover and section designs; and Ella Gold for book design, OTHER NETWORKS is also a feat of beautiful design. And as if that weren't enough, the talented @jomc wrote the Foreword and the legendary @hrheingold wrote the epilogue. So, so many people to thank, including many of YOU, for making this happen! https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-radical-technology-sourcebook

pals! We could really use your advice. friend of the @mediaarchaeologylab Emily Francisco is trying to install a massive solo show at the Delaware Contemporary Museum which includes her incredible work "The Trans-Harmonium." However, she reports that the gallery is an accidental faraday cage! Anyone have suggestions about how to boost signal into the room?

best review I've read in ages: "I bought the typewriter to write a book. Copilot kept changing what I wrote without permission. After turning it off and it turning itself back on a few times along with word wanting to save everything to the 'cloud' I went old school." #othernetworks

"Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world." #arendt #totalitarianism

also, the @mediaarchaeologylab's Victrola not only works it BLASTS music!

oh stop it, C.P. Snow, with your charming, slightly self-deprecating critique of "computer gadgets" from 1964!

please join me Sept. 9th 5pm at the Boulder Public Library (Canyon Theater) for a 30 minute #othernetworks lecture performance involving handheld FM radios, semaphore flags, and more! followed by a 30 minute discussion with @ntnsndr and Q&A. also note....: if you live in the area and you've been wanting to get your hands on a copy, here's your chance. we managed to squirrel away 20 copies available for purchase thanks to the great folks at the Boulder Bookstore!

still amazed that the @mediaarchaeologylab now has a functioning Apple Lisa...it's really something, isn't it?! and a bit of writing from someone in 2007 who took some pains to write a long document about how they were only going to write on the Lisa from that point on and that we don't need any other newer fancier software for writing than that 💚

important local news: "On Sunday, a digital road sign on Nelson Road was hacked to display the message 'BOOBS PART 2,' just two weeks after a sign on the same road was hacked to display the word 'BOOBS,' according to a city of Longmont spokesperson."

flip book! "Dance Lesson: from the good old days" (1941) #mediaBeforeMedia @mediaarchaeologylab

still at a loss to understand why Hannah Arendt isn't treated as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. in 1963, long before Latour and Haraway, she gives us a nascent critique of "electronic brains" that supposedly replace and even exceed human brains. crucially, unlike electronic brains, human brains are as "terrestrial, earthbound, as any other part of the human body". as usual, next to impossible to capture the complexity of her argument in a couple social media posts but you get the gist #ai

oh look, the dudes have begun their fear mongering already. finger-wagging about the potential criminality of using mini FM transmitters under the guise of "expertise" is a popular tactic to keep people away from amateur radio. build the device as we suggest, check your country's guidelines for low power radio, and have fun! ours transmits less than a watt over less than 100 feet. @mediaarchaeologylab @rose_alibi

if you've been wondering how you YES YOU might go about building small networks outside of the internet or if you've been wondering abt the untapped potential of good ol' fashioned amateur radio, check out our website for #othernetworks and pamphlet Build Your Own Mini FM Transmitter https://othernetworks.net/2024/08/20/build-your-own-mini-fm-transmitter/ @rose-alibi.bsky.social @mediaarchaeologylab haeologylab

just here to publicly note: almost every woman in my life is struggling with low-level, ongoing health niggles that no medical professional is helping them with. I am a witness & participant in endless texts about "I tried this weird alt therapy and maybe it's working and maybe you can try it too". (it was strangely affirming to have a mid-wife respond to my many questions with "I'm sorry, I just don't know and no one seems to know because no money has been spent on women's health.")

I know Zuck et al count on us not leaving major social media platforms for fear of social isolation, but the fear is at least partly based in fact--IG is the only place to keep up with all the runners I admire, runners I'm friends with, and local in-person running events. how much more social isolation can I accept while at the same time how much more can I accept this threat being used against me? #othernetworks

"In the 10 years after a Walmart Supercenter opened in a given community, the average household in that community experienced a 6 percent decline in yearly income—equivalent to about $5,000 a year in 2024 dollars—compared with households that didn’t have a Walmart open near them. Low-income, young, and less-educated workers suffered the largest losses." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/walmart-prices-poverty-economy/681122/