Lori Emerson

has written some books but most proud of _Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook_ (Anthology Editions, May 2025) #othernetworks

media studies professor // director of the media archaeology lab (MAL) @mediaarchaeologylab // university of colorado boulder

she, they

📷 Jenna Maurice

#running, #cycling (when the sun's out), #amateurradio

Public Key

npub1xsn9p65zqwh6mwseq2ulpr62dzcnhcgqtmg7c26p6g6e38v3qsaqmr89df

NIP-05 Address

loriemerson@post-lurk-org.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrgfjsa2pq8tadhgvs9w0s3a9x3vfmuyq9a50v9dqaydvcnkgsgwspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qzrmhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekk7mg7mpzp4

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

nostr.mom

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1xsn9p65zqwh6mwseq2ulpr62dzcnhcgqtmg7c26p6g6e38v3qsaqmr89df

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Last Notes

2026-05-18 00:38:10 UTC

"Imagine you purchase bread for a sandwich but then discover that your toaster refuses to work because the bread is ‘unauthorised’. You read the toaster’s terms and conditions and find that it had lots of ‘rules’ on what you could or couldn’t do with the toaster, and find you were unaware of these restrictions until now, and you wonder if these are legal. In any case, you do not have your sandwich." https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18964 #ai

2026-05-14 21:32:55 UTC

I, for one, welcome the return of cute features like the SPACE-O-MATIC, CORONAMATIC, and page gage. forgive the language but fuck “smart” and “intelligent.”
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/575/066/661/718/022/original/556d271f3858214f.png

2026-05-02 22:59:26 UTC

“I’ve never been an activist before, but I feel so strongly about this...Gen Z is turning against AI; I’m turning against AI. The city is telling us that AI is inevitable, but won’t tell me what devices and applications my children are using.” https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2026/05/01/parents-demand-ai-moratorium-in-schools-during-marathon-panel-for-educational-policy-meeting/

2026-04-10 01:30:11 UTC

the @nprofile…gm5m has been hosting Berlin artist Clemens Schöll for the past month - tonight he installed his incredible “Artist at Work” while talking about “the right to automation”
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/377/807/008/153/568/original/110eff278ecf393a.png
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2026-04-08 20:25:58 UTC

I had the chance to go on the Boulder Valley Frequency podcast to express my...disgust, I think is the right word, with the contract that CU recently signed with Open AI and with the prospect of integrating ChatGPT throughout higher education #ai https://www.boulderfrequency.com/2600535/episodes/18981131-cancel-it-cu-students-profs-sound-the-alarm-on-ai-deal

2026-04-05 17:48:23 UTC

Benjamin wrote his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in 1940, shortly before he died by suicide escaping the Nazis. Imagine, now, Hannah Arendt reading this aloud to fellow refugees fleeing the Third Reich on the ship that was smuggling them to the U.S.
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/353/352/835/775/785/original/c44fc8de02504d43.jpg

2026-04-03 14:00:20 UTC

and then yet another random dude from the far side of the fediverse thought he'd let me know I'm "excessively full of myself" because of an article I posted on AI and data centers. I suppose it's inevitable that one will be reminded every once in awhile of the actually existing foundational simmering resentment toward women. [I deleted the original post because I learned from colleagues that the study the article is about is flawed]

2026-04-02 16:18:09 UTC

finally, Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation--truly as relevant now as they were in 1987 #othernetworks
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/336/011/960/169/135/original/145beb12564fefd2.png

2026-03-30 14:54:27 UTC

oh my. Wendell Berry in 1987. " I would hate to think that my work as a writer could not be done without a direct dependence on strip-mined coal...For the same reason, it matters to me that my writing is done in the daytime, without electric light."

2026-03-27 15:57:17 UTC

a 1990s-era Earthlink explainer that reminds us of a time when we still had the power (and the ability) to accept - or refuse #othernetworks (pic taken by @nprofile…0qyk)
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/301/956/892/227/602/original/3a5e3de1c2dccb3b.webp

2026-03-10 01:53:21 UTC

if anyone is interested, here are some talking points we've put together on the CU ChatGPT deal so that we can all educate our friends, colleagues, students, staff, admin, etc. #ai https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aOel41-XD_D9DPLMJEUSia6Ej_mmXbfPcM9DG7GIDT8/edit?usp=drive_link

2025-11-22 16:16:36 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…vqqu sorry! You can also order from your favorite local bookseller

2025-11-21 20:11:27 UTC

a Friday surprise! my beloved book, Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, is now officially back in print AND ON SALE! #othernetworks if you know folks who have been trying to track down a copy, I'd love it if you'd give this a boost to spread the word https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-radical-technology-sourcebook

2025-10-28 11:35:33 UTC

well. now I'm getting reports of student papers “writen” using chatGPT that not only pilfered from my #othernetworks book but claimed it was written by a man with the same last name. it has taken me until now (yes, I am slow to see things sometimes) to understand that the web of 10-15 years ago is definitively dead and that me freely sharing thoughts drafts articles chapters book excerpts on my blog is only feeding the very gen AI that I have come to despise. And so now I am going to go through as many posts/pages as I can and poison my own content with random statements about how genAI is fraudulent is corrupt is destroying the labor market is stealing our students’ futures and more. But I will always share paywalled pdfs with anyone who asks because gate keeping knowledge can’t be the answer--- #ai

2025-10-15 15:45:13 UTC

21 arguments against AI in education---> https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/ai-in-education-is-a-public-problem/ #ai

2025-06-23 20:23:54 UTC

I have loved @nprofile…00z7 for a long time and so it made me extra happy to talk #othernetworks with @nprofile…a5hm on his show "Techntonic". airing TODAY at 6pm ET! click the play button at wfmu.org starting at 6pm and see links to the book + listener comments on the episode page: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/153378

2025-04-11 23:53:00 UTC

finally getting into #meshtastic at the Media Archaeology Lab and dang it is just so incredibly cool and simple. end-to-end encryption for chatting using a long range, low power protocol over radio #othernetworks
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/322/017/557/622/480/original/207906033c4eefef.png

2025-03-22 17:01:49 UTC

it seems worth pointing out that one of the key papers that gave birth to AI, "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (from 1943), in which McCulloch and Pitts model the brain and all its functions as a digital system, is full of errors and was soon found to be a very poor model of how the brain actually works. doesn't that give you pause? #AI

2025-03-15 14:48:08 UTC

I don't know what took me so long to get here but my new favorite activity is to find every security camera wherever I go and give it the middle finger. very therapeutic, my friends. highly recommended.

2025-03-04 22:56:36 UTC

‪and again. "Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be simply recognized as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is 'normal' if he is like everybody else and 'abnormal' if he happens to be different." --Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) #Arendt #totalitarianism

2025-02-18 18:03:01 UTC

📡 at very long last, today is the big day! my beloved book, OTHER NETWORKS: A RADICAL TECHNOLOGY SOURCEBOOK, is officially available for pre-order!
This a speculative index of communications networks, a love letter to experimental art & technology, & a liberatory guide for escaping the corporate present. Many of you know that, for years, I have been compiling and cataloguing a history of communications networks, one full of alternatives to the monolithic, surveilled internet as we now know it. The result is this compendium of possibilities that existed before or outside of the internet and a tribute to their experimental use by artists, covering everything from pirate radio to barbed wire telegraph, from synthesizers that transmitted over the telephone to encoded messages bounced off the surface of the moon.
Because of the hard work and creative genius of Mark Iosifescu, Jesse Pollock, and everyone at Anthology Editions; Robert Beatty who made the breathtaking cover and section designs; and Ella Gold for book design, OTHER NETWORKS is also a feat of beautiful design. And as if that weren't enough, the talented @nprofile…gd46 wrote the Foreword and the legendary @nprofile…prnp wrote the epilogue. So, so many people to thank, including many of YOU, for making this happen! https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-radical-technology-sourcebook
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/026/177/747/254/104/original/c9d3b31839cccce6.png
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https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/026/190/772/922/325/original/09279f669db0e388.jpg

2025-02-14 03:04:50 UTC

this is what happens when artists take classes in media theory: they make incredible ceramic tiles of the first page of McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" and Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"! I mean really, people. Look at these things 😍
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/000/010/868/397/086/original/c81c4abfc10a9919.jpg
https://post.lurk.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/000/010/884/809/670/original/cd4c82a68edea1c1.jpg

2024-02-19 23:55:19 UTC

if you have clarity on this, I would be so grateful to hear from you: one of the few parameters (partly to save my sanity) of #othernetworks is that networks should not have been "on" the internet. I've taken this to mean it didn't use TCP/IP and of course now I'm on the home-stretch of this book, I worry that's incoherent. but, to counter myself and to ask YOU: computer conferences/message boards/discussion forums did for a time operate outside the internet? they did not necessarily use TCP/IP?

2023-08-06 15:38:45 UTC

- reply

@npub1xpg…apfc thanks for sharing this really interesting project! your visualizations are especially intriguing and beautiful. our projects are definitely related but I think the difference is that the nodes of your networks are people, or people are the primary movers of the information being networked whereas in my project the transmission medium is primary (even if they're vocal cords or drums)

2023-08-05 23:24:06 UTC

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@npub1xpg…apfc nothing written up that's publicly available but generally, knowing that I can't include everything, the criteria have been: two or more nodes; any transmission medium; any topology; must be able to be used for human communication that can be construed as language (so that excludes systems for monitoring, surveillance etc.); and is interesting, unusual, forgotten, and/or important. I think that's just about it!