Many technologies and practices that define the Internet today date back to the 1990s - such as user-generated content, participatory platforms and social media. Indeed, many early ideas about the future of the Internet have been implemented, albeit without fulfilling the envisioned political utopias. By tracing back the technotopian vision, Clemens Apprich develops a media genealogical understanding that points beyond the current state of socio-technical networks.
This highly original book raises the question of how new technological assemblages, often referred to as digital networks, have profoundly transformed not only our social, but also our cultural, economical and political fields of action over the last 30 years. At the beginning of the 1990s, a very active media culture scene emerged and provided a space to discuss the potential of newly built network technologies. The author defines these pioneer projects as experimental playgrounds for new forms of media and social practices, such that have become part of our everyday culture. By looking back to the early days of network-building - when the terms of `possible futures' were still under negotiation - this book informs our understanding of one of the most recent transformations of (post-)modernity. Apprich revisits a critical time when the Internet was not yet an everyday reality, but when its potential was already understood and fiercely debated. The historical context of net cultures provides the basis from which Apprich critically engages with current debates about the weal and woe of the Internet and challenges today's predominant network model.
Industry Reviews
This remarkable book reformulates what network theory is and can be by uncovering the "forgotten futures" of early 1990s net cultures. It reveals the importance of social and political experimentation to the building of alternative network infrastructures and inspires us to action. A must-read for anyone who cares about the networked future. -- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor and Chair of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
This is that rare book that combines close attention to the materiality of digital media, with careful attention to reinterpreting theory and a sustained engagement with artistic and political practices. The book creatively reminds us that there is a genealogy of alternative models by which to envision networks and the internet, while developing an original and sophisticated critique of contemporary ubiquitous computing. Technotopia thus makes timely and important interventions into rethinking discourses of both smartness and infrastructure that will be informative to media theorists and practitioners alike. Apprich reminds us that the future is not technically ordained; there might yet exist other worlds and other networks, possibilities for critique that will also be "critical" in providing different forms of information infrastructures for more plural and just worlds. -- Orit Halpern, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University
Finally, a history of our present mined from the golden decade of network cultures: the 1990s. The indie music scene had the Pixies, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Radiohead. For radical technocultures, it was collaborative text filtering of Nettime, The Yes Men, DIY tactical media, barcamps, hackers, movemements, and an all-out critical assault on the Californian Ideology. Scouring the vanishing archives and forgotten concepts of this lost decade, Clemens Apprich returns to our miserable century the experimental horizon of a past whose autonomy is not so long lost. -- Ned Rossiter, Professor of Communication at Western Sydney University
As "surveillance capitalism" is undermining our democracies, alternatives are urgently needed. Apprich provides an insightful account of early net-cultures and their radical experiments. This book helps us to look back in order to envision a different future. -- Felix Stalder, Professor of Digital Culture and Network Theories, Zurich University of the Arts
Technotopia revisits the as-yet-unrealised potential of early experiments in net criticism. But it does far more than show the continuing relevance of initiatives such as Critical Art Ensemble and nettime. By shifting the analysis of internet culture from the static approach of media archaeology to the dynamism of media genealogy, Apprich makes an important critical intervention in his own right. -- Gary Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts, Coventry University
