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

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/

1965 speaks to 2024: "the radio is an instrument of mass struggle...But the radio is an instrument of struggle only when what it says corresponds to what the masses feel & want...when they cannot hear what it says, why they invent what it says--to the greater glory of the revolution." #othernetworks (from the introduction to Franz Fanon's _A Dying Colonialism_, original French version from 1959)

happy thoughts from Mark Fisher in 2001: "It's of course no accident that the current power elite (Spielberg, Lucas, Gates, Blair) belonged to the so-called counterculture of the 1960s. Capital, needless to say, is indifferent to individual human motivation, but happy slaves are better slaves, and the reprogramming of the way the master class thinks (about itself, about workers, about capital) has been crucial to the presentation of the multi-nationalised capital's current dominion as immutable fact."

@ratsprite @mediaarchaeologylab yes I think you're right! I hadn't yet put that together but they're basically lantern slides with a handle sticking out

@K4mpfie @ratsprite @mediaarchaeologylab @msbellows I have no choice but to comply! later tonight...

due to popular demand, kaleidoscope magic lantern slide from the 1890s in action---

@msbellows @K4mpfie @ratsprite @mediaarchaeologylab

not everything is terrible--take this 19th century mechanical kaléidoscope for instance that just arrived for the @mediaarchaeologylab. what a beauty!

at some point in the distant past, when I still said I did "poetics," some perceptive person said I should read Amiri Baraka. I tried but it must not have been the right moment. suddenly now, 20 years later, every word of his rings true and profound: "the future is always here in the past”. Baraka also understood what I only got last month: that most of what's interesting in McLuhan was already there in Norbert Wiener. "Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators...Machines, the entire technology of the West, is just that, the technology of the West." #othernetworks

those of you who helped me advocate for the student who was wrongfully accused of using AI to write her essay might like to know that, faced with the articles you shared with me demonstrating that AI checkers are completely unreliable, the professor relented. I also wrote a long email to the department chair outlining how the professor violated university policy about uploading student data to AI...among other things. So weird we now have to be so vigilant about advocating for and protecting our students but this is the world we're living in! thank you for your help--- #ai

"Soldering is Easy" as a comic book! This is so fantastic - we need more of these guides for everyone out there who would like to cultivate a greater sense of autonomy when it comes to their electronics, both building and repairing https://mightyohm.com/blog/2011/04/soldering-is-easy-comic-book/

I have posted (and probably will continue to post for years to come) a lot here about #othernetworks - a cluster of projects that document networks before and/or outside of the internet along with artist experiments on these networks. The main project I recently finished is a catalog of about 85 of these other networks that will be published by Anthology Editions as a beautifully designed art book in spring 2025.

#othernetworks is an archival project and it's also an educational project that comes out of my belief that we are all capable both of understanding networks from the past and of building alternative networks for the future.

I also like to post about anything related to media archaeology, alternative histories of technology, alternative networks, and alternative network protocols. #introductions

"Moving to a world where protocols and not proprietary platforms dominate would solve many issues currently facing the internet today...In short, it would push the power and decision making out to the ends of the network, rather than keeping it centralized" https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech #othernetworks

friends, can you recommend any articles discussing inaccurate AI checkers? I am trying to help a student who has been falsely accused of using AI to write her papers. incredibly, but not surprisingly, *all* of her writing is now being flagged by these checkers as being produced by AI. I'm trying to come up with ways to help her effectively make her case. #ai

I'm not a frequent reader of activist tactics - but I found this piece very clarifying, especially his points about the power not of protests or reason but of mass noncooperation. dangerous, messy, and very effective. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins/

still pressing on in my quest to dump big tech and turn my back on billionaires, no matter how miniscule a difference it makes, here is another great resource: a catalog of "ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software." it even includes a list of alternatives to itself. (thank you @x_tof) https://switching.software/

SO GOOD. European alternatives for nearly all Amazon, Google, Microsoft products along with alts to Github, Slack, etc. now we need to create a North American version of this. thank you, @vortex! https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to

now, as rage slowly overtakes sadness, it's perfectly clear to me that while it barely makes even a snowflake of difference, my job over the next 6 months is to completely transition out of Amazon & Google products/affiliates. if I cld leave Twitter after 13 years of investment, I can do this too. stay tuned, too, for a series of workshops by the @mediaarchaeologylab on how to disinvest from big tech.

echoing some things that @brettbalogh has been posting about, I'm also leaning harder than ever into #othernetworks. that alternative networks and network structures produce different ways of being in the world, with each other, is not a cute idea. it is at the heart of what we need to do next to wrest control away from big tech/billionaires. building yr own mini FM transmitter is also not a cute little time-wasting project. it is fundamental to this work & of taking back a small bit of autonomy over how we learn, relate, communicate w/each other. more on this in the coming years but in the meantime, https://othernetworks.net/2024/08/20/build-your-own-mini-fm-transmitter/

#othernetworks friends and even foes! the @mediaarchaeologylab is hosting another fantastic talk in our barbed wire fence phone installation this Wednesday at 12:30pm MT (on campus CASE W250) by the wonderful @ntnsndr! Prof. Schneider will be giving a talk titled "Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life." If you can’t attend in person, we are also streaming his talk on our Twitch channel – just go to https://www.twitch.tv/mediaarchaeology