Other Internet…The Book!

Hello friends,

It’s been a while… First of all, thank you for your patience 🙏 The time away wasn’t planned to stretch quite this long, but it’s been for a good reason—we are writing a book!

Since its origins, Other Internet has been a part of a subculture we’ve come to think of as the “kids-that-grew-up-on-crypto”. We, and you, are part of the micro-generation that was shaped by the rise of blockchain technology, its ideals, its shortcomings, and its cycles of experimentation. We’ve always felt it would be good to document our journey as a resource for others, and with this anthology we want to give a snapshot of that time, together with our learnings through it. The publication comprises our essays, published in print for the first time, along with previously unpublished material, and newly commissioned writings and interviews with squad members and friends.

Edited by Guy Mackinnon-Little and designed by Leïth Benkhedda, it traces Other Internet’s development from its early essays, through our experiments in squad-based organizing and internal peer-education formats, to our commercial engagements with crypto protocols. The text as a whole is a deep cut into the recent history of the crypto ecosystem and its lore, a reflection of the ideas and patterns it has generated, and a presentation of lessons learned by our group of cultural technologists and writers.

The book is meant to offer a snapshot of the onset of the blockchain era, while giving a window into what it was like to be a part of a cultural research organization at a pivotal moment during the emergence of a new internet technology. We share some of our tribulations and learnings, our internal organizational experiments, and bring closure to this chapter of internet history to make way for the next generation.

What’s happened so far?

First we found our wonderful editor, Guy Mackinnon-Little, and our brilliant designer, Leïth Benkhedda, who are helping us translate Other Internet into book form. We decided to partner with Metalabel to release the book, and are excited to be included in their seasonal collection alongside many of our friends and favorite artists.

Sam, Toby, and Laura organized all the material Other Internet has ever published in the past 6 years — from our essays and commercial engagements with protocols, to public talks, art collaborations, and residency program — and previously unpublished material, like Learning Garden, our internal peer education experiment.

Guy faced the arduous task of reading all this material and cutting it down to a selection of essays reflecting the breadth and depth of Other Internet’s contributions to the space. It was important to us to demonstrate the irreverent nature of our collective energy, but also our impact. Other Internet Technologies™ have penetrated all kinds of organizations across many protocol ecosystems.

We managed to do this by organizing the texts according to three thematic eras that track the evolution of the crypto narrative as well as how we came to understand our internal discourse: New Institutions, Squad Energy, and Networked Spirituality.

Toby, Laura and Sam have written three new mini essays that summarize how those key themes run through all of Other Internet. We also received wonderful new contributions from squadmates Kei Kreutler and Aaron Z. Lewis, and long-time friend of Other Internet, Nadia Asparouhova.

Leïth is now in the process of finalizing the layout before it’s sent off to the printer. It’s been so rewarding seeing the all the pieces finally come together into a (quite substantial) book!

With the evolution of Web3, Other Internet is also evolving — and for us evolving doesn’t necessarily mean ‘scaling up.’ At Other Internet we have always believed that organizations have a natural lifecycle, that their best parts should be used as compost for the seeds for future endeavors. As the organization is finding its new shape, negotiating members’ nascent and long-standing interests with our collective desire to foster new generations of independent research, this book is a way for us to organize and share the knowledge we’ve created, and offer a blueprint for the next generations of Other Internets to come.

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Expect more updates from us soon, but in the meantime, get hyped. We have a monster of a book tour planned. You won’t hear the end of us. Yatú Espinosa once described Other Internet as a political party, and you’re about to see us canvassing. We’re knocking on every door. In this moment of maximum pain and maximum uncertainty, wherever there is a stronghold of Squad Energy—we will be there.

🔥,

Sam, Laura, and Toby