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Title: “How to Activate th e Potential of Imaginary Networks”
Abstract: In this talk I explore how imaginary networks (never-\, partly-\, or even fully-re alized but short-lived communication technologies) provide us with meaningf ul models for alternative future networks outside of or beyond the internet . In short\, imaginary networks are envisionings of how networking could be otherwise. While media archaeology has explored some examples of imaginary media\, the vast array of imaginary networks that have been proposed\, dep icted\, and described since the 19th century has barely been accounted for. No doubt\, these networks have been largely overlooked because it's all to o easy to reduce networks such as Jacques-Toussaint Benoît's pasilalanic-sy mpathetic compass to mere curiosities or cruel thought experiments and thus relegate them to irrelevancy. Given that imaginary networks have been so t horoughly overlooked\, it's also not surprising that no one has yet noted t he possible significance of the fact that other (cruelty-free) unrealized i maginary networks such as Paul Otlet's Mundaneum and Hugo Gernsback's radio -controlled television plane from the early twentieth century are depicted as wireless. Further\, we have yet to explore how short-lived imaginary net works such as the Voice of Free Algeria or Radio Alice--radio networks that played a profoundly important role in numerous liberation movements throug hout the world between the 1950s and the 1980s--(still) exemplify the possi bility of new beginnings in the future
Biography: Lo ri Emerson is Professor of Media Studies\; Director of the Intermedia Arts\ , Writing\, and Performance Program\; and Associate Chair of Graduate Studi es at UC Boulder. She is also Founding Director of the Media Archaeology La b. Emerson is author of Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (An thology Editions\, 2025)\, co-author with Darren Wershler and Jussi Parikka of THE LAB BOOK: Situated Practices in Media Studies (University of Minnes ota Press\, 2021)\, author of Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound (University of Minnesota Press June\, 2014)\, and editor o f numerous collections. A full list of publications\, as well as details on the Media Studies Lab can be found on h er website.
This lecture is an onl ine event\, and takes place on November 6\, 2025\, at 12:3 0pm PT. Attendees must register here for the Zoom Webinar ahead of time. Please note that this is a recorded event.
Missed the lecture on November 6 th? You can access the video and audio reco rding on UBC’s cIRcle database.
Questions? Pleas e email cenes.undergrad@ubc.ca
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