Book Launch | Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet

• NB: Dit evenement vindt plaats in het Engels
• Launch of Geert Lovink's new book Stuck on the Platform
• A conversation between the author Geert Lovink and digital anthropologist Payal Arora, moderated by Bits of Freedom director Evelyn Austin

What: Book launch
With: Geert Lovink, Payal Arora, Evelyn Austin
When: Wednesday, 9 November 2022, 20:00–21:45 hrs
Where: V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media, Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam
Organised by: De Dépendance in collaboration with Valiz, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media and The Institute of Network Cultures
Admission: € 10,- (regular), €6,- (reduction) tickets available here
Language: English

We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new normal of a 24/7 online life. What happens when your home office starts to feel like a call centre and you’re too fried to log out of Facebook? 

We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression are all markers of a platform culture that no longer serves the general public, but favours platform giants instead. 

Media theorist and internet critic Geert Lovink argues that we can reclaim the internet on our own terms. Celebrating the launch of his new book, Stuck on the Platform (Valiz, 2022), we discuss our current technological predicament and look for ways out of the digital slump. Following a presentation of the book, digital anthropologist Payal Arora and Bits of Freedom-director Evelyn Austin will join the conversation. How do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition, and what can be done about it? 

About the speakers

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Dark Fiber (2002), Networks Without a Cause (2012) and Sad by Design (2019). Het is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures and Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the University of Amsterdam.

Payal Arora is a Full Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at the Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a digital anthropologist and author of several books including Dot Com Mantra: Social Computing in the Central Himalayas, The Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0, and, The Next Billion Users: Digital Life beyond the West. Much of her research focuses on digital cultures, global inequality and data governance in the Global South.

Evelyn Austin (host) is the Executive Director of Bits of Freedom, a European digital rights organisation based in Amsterdam. For over two decades, Bits of Freedom has worked to shape internet policy in support of an open and just society in which people can hold power accountable and effectively question the status quo.

This programme was conceived by De Dépendance in collaboration with Valiz, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media and The Institute of Network Cultures.