Lori Emerson
media studies professor | Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (Anthology Editions, May 2025) | dir. @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social | http://loriemerson.net | Boulder, Colorado | 🇨🇦 🇺🇲 🏃♀️🚴♀️ | 📷 Jenna Maurice
- still appreciating the insightfulness and relevance of this quote from MLK Jr, 1967: "When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
- who me? hold a grudge? against some older guy who just appeared at the coffee shop & about a decade ago practically got into an argument with me about whether I was a student in his computer science class or not while I repeatedly told him I was a professor and this wasn't possible? nah, not me.
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- I also wish to make it known that I mutter some choice curse words under my breath when I see CFPs for conferences on topic x and AI without a single mention of the profoundly dire consequences of data centers driving "AI" amongst all the words describing how AI reshapes, challenges, etc etc.
- I said some words about labs and the importance of old tech - hopefully the words I spoke align with what I actually think...
- Reposted by Lori EmersonBoulder represent!
- small update from Boulder, Colorado: among many other smaller ongoing actions, yesterday about a 1000 students were out protesting ICE. Today about another 1000 showed up for an anti-ICE bike ride around town. honks and waves and cheers and bell ringing and whistles - the anger & outrage is growing
- so far still only rumors but please let’s be aware—-
- Boulder area peoples, rumored presence as of last night. please share.
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- Reposted by Lori EmersonI am introducing the Cut It Out And This Time I Really Mean It bill. It provides an additional $57 billion to the murder goons but they will agree to wear business casual Monday through Thursday and if they do any murders they have to put a dollar in this jar.
- just realized I despise emails that open with “Hey there,” because it is so obviously patronizing and inappropriately informal all rolled up into two words (ha but also not ha because I not so secretly really believe I’m right)
- this is the adorable Stafford Beer I know: his 1981 attempt to imagine TV as a two-way channel between the government and the people. now where is my Algedonic Meter! #otherNetworks #cybernetics
- so. Alex Pretti ends up murdered because two women were blowing whistles.
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- just here to note how "interesting" it is that in 1960 British cyberneticist Stafford Beer envisioned a "lights out factory" that was purely automatic and designed to make human labor redundant. Two years later in 1962 ... wait for it... 1/2
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- deep and fierce love for this student: "Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit" www.thenation.com/article/soci...
- Reposted by Lori Emersonmoral arc right to repair
- anti-heuristics heuristics 💚 too-dirty-to-be-trained.net/anti-heurist...
- eagerly taking this all in: "How to Make Your Data Dirty" error417.expectation.fail/13scoresagai... #ai
- Reposted by Lori EmersonIt was inevitable.
- I don’t know what this is - some version of “karma’s a bitch”? when you thought seriously injuring yourself from tripping and falling was only for “old people” and now you yourself must be old because damn! I’m down for the count for the day from tripping and falling! I am fine - just humbled.
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- writes @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social, "Grok is an intentional instrument for establishing, maintaining, & manipulating a consensus reality on X...coupled with the apparent eugenicist white-supremacist proclivities of its owner, this makes it...uniquely dangerous." www.techpolicy.press/grok-is-an-e...
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- thanks to some sleuthing by European pals, with some relief I can report that copies of the second printing of #othernetworks should be available in Europe in about 4 weeks! hooray and phew! shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898...
- wow. "The Earthside Wish Machine is a time-based...site-situated meteor protocol for wish transmission [that] appropriates the obsolete military technology as personal wish apparatus." yes please more #othernetworks! worrymetaphor.net/earthside-wi...
- I continue to live out certain corny countercultural ideals like the value of technology sourcebooks for education and empowerment. so, also just to say: there are still copies of the second printing of #othernetworks shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898... 1/2
- in 1971 we suffered "the violence of the entropy of old forms" but in 2026 we suffer the violence of the entropy of (seemingly?) new forms. from "CYBERNETIC GUERILLA WARFARE" (www.radicalsoftware.org/volume1nr3/p...)
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- I had a nice time chit chatting about the history of real and imaginary networks with Anya Shchetvina - you can find the transcript here #othernetworks matterofimagination.neocities.org/blog10
- as a Canadian surely it is my sworn duty to have known that there's such a thing as "spicy hockey books" mostly marketed to women?! #heatedrivalry
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- happy holidays from R.D. Laing: "I was trying to describe the family 'mangle,' the way families manufacture pain for their members." (1996) ha!
- this is what is extremely enjoyable tonight: www.youtube.com/watch?v=720Y...
- oh no I definitely don't relate to having a long string of imaginary nemesis(es) because it's "the key to pretty much every personal and professional accomplishment I’ve achieved" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/o...
- and then sometimes you get spam from the Chief Director Internet Crime Complaint Center and you think oh that's a great idea we should totally do that---
- I should have been soliciting contributions! in an imaginary future where I get to write #othernetworks part deux, what would you add?
