Internet Beyond
Global Network
conference blog
The third international conference «Internet Beyond Global Network» is dedicated to understanding the Internet beyond its role and existence as a global network. We are eager to understand several processes which have taken place in recent years in different countries. These processes can be described as fragmentation, a growing interest in the diversity of internet usage, and the transformation of utopian and dystopian narratives around it

We invite researchers and intellectuals who deal with the Internet and issues of globality/locality to contribute to the conference blog before and after the conference. We presume that these submissions will demonstrate different ways of thinking about current problems, revealing conflicts, challenges and solutions which may be useful in further understanding topics referring to globality and locality. We encourage open discussion and contrasting viewpoints as well exploring integrative ways of thinking about the Internet beyond globality.
  • Geert Lovink
    Founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures; Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam; Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School
    The internet is not a cultural «melting pot». Instead, we ended up with software regimes that install filter bubbles as default. Networks have become cages, filled with audiences that need to be served with smooth messages that do not upset your users. Differences and conflicts are seen as values that have to be filtered out, prevented, and ultimately violently punished, at all cost. If you disagree with me, you're a troll, and I will make sure that you will banned. That's the cultural logic of the internet, and resulting «expulsions» of the Other are actively promoted by the Silicon Valley engineering class. Instead, I am an advocate to «work through the issues, together».

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  • Valérie Schafer
    Professor in Contemporary European History at the C²DH (Centre for Contemporary and Digital History) at the University of Luxembourg;
    one of the editors of «Internet histories»
    The aim of this third conference is to understand «the Internet beyond its role as a global network». Although the call for papers encouraged to explore "several processes which have taken place in recent years in different countries", I would like to briefly emphasise the fact that an approach focusing on micro and national cases and combining several levels — from local to global — is also fully relevant for the history of the Internet.

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  • Payal Arora
    PhD, the Founder of Catalyst Lab, Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Author of multiple books on the internet and the global South
    The fact is that for decades, colonialism was considered a notion of the bygone era, a remnant of past imaginations of how the local and global intersected. It thereby is promising to see the revival and recognition of the deep aftermath of the centuries old colonial project take form in the contemporary power struggle between technology industries, postcolonial countries and their people.

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  • Daniel Miller
    Professor of University College London, research lead of Why we post project
    When we think of locality in terms of the internet what becomes important is not necessarily a geographical space whether offline or online. But rather the means to create people key relationships which may be to other people or to other ideals.

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  • Ivan Krastev
    Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM)
    My idea is that cyber is the opposite to the nuclear weapon. What is the most important in nuclear? Nuclear strength of the states and particularly several states, this is the symbol of the ultimate state power. And then you have this, cyber: many actors, total decentralization, no state actors can end up as powerful as the state actors. If you believe that now the cyber is the major weapon, in a certain way this is a major fragmentation and decentralization instrument.

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