Dial-Up to Utopia

Dial Up to Utopia: An Oral History of the Early Internet shares the voices of the artists, critics, activists, and writers who were deeply engaged in the genesis and culture of the world’s most powerful technology: the internet.

Participants include Douglas Rushkoff, Jane Metcalfe, Bruce Sterling, Julien Mailland, Geert Lovink, Ricardo Dominguez, Sabria David, JR Carpenter, Omar Kholeif and others. Through their stories and recollections, you will relive the excitement of the early internet, when many believed that technology would unite the world, as well as the disillusionment of what emerged: namely, the culture of vanity and harassment, surveillance capitalism, and precarious labor.

With the utopian dream of the early internet almost unrecognizable to younger people today, Dial Up to Utopia aims to convey the euphoria and sense of endless potential of the nascent days of our online world, as well as offering a critically optimistic outlook of what might lie ahead.

Joerg Blumtritt is a professor of interactive media teaching at NYU New York and Abu Dhabi. He has cofounded data science and research companies in Munich, Gdansk, London, and New York.  Joerg consults with businesses and public institutions on technology-driven transformation. As a political activist and researcher, he works on projects pertaining to the future of democratic participation and media. Joerg is the coauthor of the “Slow Media Manifesto,” which has been translated into twenty-five languages and is the subject of numerous lectures and PhD theses.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and a biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions: portrait sculptures created from analyses of genetic material such as hair, cigarette butts, and chewed-up gum collected in public places. Her work has been exhibited internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, Transmediale, the Walker Center for Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, SFMOMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the New York Historical Society, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired.