Other Internet 2018–2024: from New Institutions to Networked Spirituality
What is Other Internet? A research organization? A learning institution? A time machine? A boundary object? We’ve embedded each of these powerful potential energies into our new book, Other Internet 2018–2024, out on Metalabel now.
When we first started working on this project, we conceived of the book as an anthology of Other Internet’s work over the last 6 years. We’ve been through many stages as an organization, and this easily could have been an enormous tome. Actually, it is an enormous tome. Our design and editing team asked us to put together a timeline documenting big events in in OI’s history.
We started with an internal timeline, beginning when Toby and Darren incorporated Other Internet, and passing through a lengthy Squad Era and a Full Time Staff Era. As we reflect on these, we got interested in how the stages of our evolution related to macro events, and how our essays were situated in their own cultural moments. The process of creating this external timeline reminded us of the eventful dramas of the Web3 world, but also the social, political, and economic shifts of the last decade. And it helped us see our place in the changing existential narratives of this period.
The timeline also helped us organize the material of the book around 3 critical themes.
6 years ago, was a moment of peak ambition to create New Institutions, and the hope that technology-driven organzations could deliver us from the crises of capitalism. Now that desire has transubstantiated into enthusiasm for new religions and Networked Spirituality. In the meantime, institutional ambition has been scoped down to networked forms of group agency which really kicked off during the pandemic: group chats, local networks of care, and other forms of Squad Energy.
These 3 themes - new institutions, squad energy, and networked spirituality - have been present in nearly all of OI’s work. They also nicely to correlate to the research mandates of the 501(c)(3) we set up in 2023, focusing on networked instututions, production, and spirituality.
When we consider the start of the ICO boom and reflect on where we are culturally, the difference is clear. We really are in a different era now:
from “worlding” to “touching grass” in the ruined landscape of worlds
from “new institutions” to the collapse of hope in politics (we date this to the Biden-Trump debate of summer 2024)
from “utopian conspiracy” (the tagline of our sister organization Trust) to actual conspiracies (antivax, astroturfed political polarization, Ukraine, Covid lab leak, coverup of Biden senility)
from ICO ponzis to real ponzis (FTX, Trumpcoin)
from universalism (Bratton, accelerationism, social media) to localism (nationalism, ethnocentrism, hyperlocality)
from software technology to bodies as the site of utopian visions
from technology “space” and crypto “space” (disembodied discourses) to focus on “place” (locality, presence, couture software, pop-up cities)]
from yield farmers to actual farmers 👩🌾
from belief in a technosingularity god to belief in actual god
This timeline, woven between each essay in the text, evokes how this cultural evolution happened and documents individual moments within the shifting vibe.
Other Internet Book Tour
Recently we did two events that worked with the timeline. The first was at the recent Funding the Commons in San Francisco, and the second was with Protein, who asked us to facilitate an online workshop in support of our book launch. We had a lot of fun meeting folks in the Protein community and working with them to create their own “other internet” maps.
If you’re part of a podcast or media organization, a cultural institution, bookstore, or crypto-native org interested who might like to host Other Internet for a workshop of this kind, please get in touch! Toby, Laura, and Sam are available for a “digital tour” in the coming months, and we are hatching plans for a physical tour sometime during the summer.
Get the Book!
Book pre-orders are now available on Metalabel. The book is being proofed as we write, and should be shipped internationally sometime in June.
We’re particularly interested in making the book available to the next generation of young cultural researchers who want to start their own squad/digital institution. We’d love to work with educators and people running interesting spaces to make the book accessible! Email info@otherinter.net and let’s chat.