Reimagining the Internet

This episode shares a recorded talk from the 2021 Reimagine the Internet conference, a virtual conference co-hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the soon-to-be-launched Initiative on Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In six sessions over five days, there will be more than a dozen speakers whose work hints at what the internet could become over the next decade. Knight Institute Visiting Research Scholar Ethan Zuckerman will speak about digital public infrastructure and his work to build social media spaces that are self-governing and civically focused.

This episode shares a recorded talk from the 2021 Reimagine the Internet conference, a virtual conference co-hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the soon-to-be-launched Initiative on Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In six sessions over five days, there will be more than a dozen speakers whose work hints at what the internet could become over the next decade. Katherine Maher will talk about the ways in which Wikimedia has created an alternative model for online spaces and the ways in which it has fallen short. She will also discuss lessons the rest of the web might take from the Wikimedia experiment.

Lola Hunt and Eliza Sorensen join the podcast to tell us about their crucial work to build an internet safe for sex workers. Through their company Assembly Four, Lola and Eliza maintain Switter, a Mastodon fork serving sex workers who were deplatformed from other sites, and Tryst, an advertising platform for sex work. In this special long-form episode, we talk about the fallout from America’s FOSTA/SESTA legislation, the global fight for sex worker protection, and what norms need to shift to have honest, open conversations about sex, consent, and abuse.

Lola Hunt and Eliza Sorensen join the podcast to tell us about their crucial work to build an internet safe for sex workers. Through their company Assembly Four, Lola and Eliza maintain Switter, a Mastodon fork serving sex workers who were deplatformed from other sites, and Tryst, an advertising platform for sex work. In this special long-form episode, we talk about the fallout from America’s FOSTA/SESTA legislation, the global fight for sex worker protection, and what norms need to shift to have honest, open conversations about sex, consent, and abuse.

We’re incredibly excited to have Charlton McIlwain join us for an interview about the history of the Black Internet and his book “Black Software.” As a professor in NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communications department, Charlton has studied Black spaces on the internet from the dial-up days through Black Lives Matter. At a time when so much of online culture is indebted to Black culture, Charlton asks us to imagine what it might look like for the Internet to once again be Black.

We’re incredibly excited to have Charlton McIlwain join us for an interview about the history of the Black Internet and his book “Black Software.” As a professor in NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communications department, Charlton has studied Black spaces on the internet from the dial-up days through Black Lives Matter. At a time when so much of online culture is indebted to Black culture, Charlton asks us to imagine what it might look like for the Internet to once again be Black.

We’re thrilled to welcome GJ Bogaerts, head of new media at Dutch public broadcaster VBRO and director of the Public Spaces coalition, which is a partnership of public broadcasters, arts institutions and other public service institutions in the Netherlands. GJ tells us how he hopes a mix of government support and institutional independence will help ween Europeans off of private corporate platforms to create an internet that is safe and private for users, while safe from private interests.

We’re thrilled to welcome GJ Bogaerts, head of new media at Dutch public broadcaster VBRO and director of the Public Spaces coalition, which is a partnership of public broadcasters, arts institutions and other public service institutions in the Netherlands. GJ tells us how he hopes a mix of government support and institutional independence will help ween Europeans off of private corporate platforms to create an internet that is safe and private for users, while safe from private interests.

Davi Ottenheimer joins us to explain SOLID, a revolutionary data protocol created by inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners Lee. Davi is a VP of Trust and Digital Ethics at Inrupt, the company implementing SOLID as both a user-facing technology and for large-scale infrastructural systems in the UK and India. At its core, SOLID is a framework that gives users complete and exclusive ownership of their own data, and Davi tells us what this could mean for everything from health care to band practice. Davi is also a long-time blogger at his site Flying Penguin.

Davi Ottenheimer joins us to explain SOLID, a revolutionary data protocol created by inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners Lee. Davi is a VP of Trust and Digital Ethics at Inrupt, the company implementing SOLID as both a user-facing technology and for large-scale infrastructural systems in the UK and India. At its core, SOLID is a framework that gives users complete and exclusive ownership of their own data, and Davi tells us what this could mean for everything from health care to band practice. Davi is also a long-time blogger at his site Flying Penguin.