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loriemerson

loriemerson.net

An English literature professor for the first 14 years of my career, I am now Professor and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Media Studies Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am also Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab and co-founder of the Intermedia Arts, Writi

Computing historyNetworkingEssays / personal

Posts
122 from 13 Mar 2011 to 12 Aug 2026
Posting
now and then (2 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 2

  1. syllabus for Other Media Histories: Networks
  2. Liberation Radio(s) Beyond the Internet Imaginary

2025 4

  1. Other Cybernetics for Other AIs
  2. exploring NABU in 2025, a Canadian cable TV network from 1984
  3. Recipe for an Other Networks Lecture-Performance
  4. Other Networks is now available for pre-order

2024 6

  1. the history of microbroadcasting and how you can too!
  2. a brief history of barbed wire fence telephone networks
  3. Build Your Own Mini FM Transmitter / Other Networks for Everyone
  4. Chronological List of Network Experiments in Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook
  5. chronological list of networks in Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook
  6. table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook

2023 1

  1. Other Networks Outtakes: “A 3 Country Happening”

2022 3

  1. Flexible, Emergent, and Medium-Specific | Methodologies for Hands-On Experimentation
  2. Blasphemy, Not Apostasy | (Human)DolphinNets
  3. The Importance of Getting the Weather on Your Atari 800, or, Slow Networks Experiment 7

2021 7

  1. Six (Difficult and Inconvenient) Values to Reclaim the Future with Old Media
  2. The Net Has Never Been Neutral
  3. Excavating Future Histories of the Internet: AfroNet | Newsletter | Telegraph
  4. the cosmic internet
  5. Why is this all so delightful? Or, Slow Networks Experiment 6
  6. Slow Networks Experiment 5: very short range over-air transmission
  7. Slow Networks Experiment 4: Videotelephony

2020 6

  1. Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission
  2. “Did We Dream Enough?” THE THING BBS as an Experiment in Social-Cyber Sculpture
  3. Slow Networks experiment 1: Over-the-Air TV Transmission
  4. Future Histories of the Internet Syllabus
  5. Towards a Variantology of Hands On Practice
  6. Interfaced

2019 6

  1. Towards Feminist Labs: Provocations for Collective Knowledge-Making
  2. Lab as Living Thing, Media Archaeological Fundus as Assemblage
  3. Excavating, Archiving, Making Media Inscriptions // In and Beyond the Media Archaeology Lab
  4. Media Archaeology Lab as Platform for Undoing and Reimagining Media History
  5. recruiting PhD students for the Media Archaeology Lab starting fall 2020
  6. now out: “Anarchive as technique in the Media Archaeology Lab | building a one Laptop Per Child mesh network”

2018 2

  1. recruiting PhD students for the Media Archaeology Lab
  2. What and Where is the Interface in Virtual Reality? An Interview with Illya Szilak on Queerskins

2017 5

  1. transcript of an interview with Nick Montfort on the Trope Tank
  2. new grad class Spring 2018 // Media Archaeology, Revisited and Reimagined
  3. Media Archaeology and Science Fiction
  4. sister labs cont. // the Trope Tank
  5. the MIT Media Lab, from Machine Shop to Wet Lab

2016 7

  1. As If, or, Using Media Archaeology to Reimagine Past, Present, and Future
  2. master class // Critical Infrastructure Studies, from Interface to Network
  3. Minitel, 1978-2012 // an other network
  4. on sport, women, academia, access, & daily affirmation
  5. workshop // Othernet, Alternet, Darknet
  6. selling the future at the MIT Media Lab
  7. sister labs // Signal Lab & Media Archaeological Fundus

2015 4

  1. media archaeology is literary studies
  2. the Canon Cat // processing advanced work
  3. grad seminar + book project: theory & practice of doing, from DH to PH
  4. What’s Wrong With the Internet and How We Can Fix It: Interview With Internet Pioneer John Day

2014 9

  1. Glitch Aesthetics
  2. Media Archaeology Lab: Opening the Archive, Disrupting the Museum
  3. guidelines for working with PhD students
  4. architecture as media archaeology as retrofuturism
  5. how bibliographic description & interface creates users and objects
  6. learn the expert manipulation of machine parts via ARTYPING (1939)
  7. graduate seminar on media archaeology | media poetics
  8. from typewriters to telematics, media noise in Robert Zend
  9. “Computers and the Arts”, Dick Higgins (1968)

2013 12

  1. interview on the Media Archaeology Lab for Infotecarios
  2. radio interview on media archaeology
  3. call for work: performance|film|sound|writing responding to John Riddell
  4. from Apple Basic to Hypercard, or, Translating Translating bpNichol
  5. opportunity for Digital Archivist at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
  6. notes on cataloging computer hardware and software
  7. from “Web Stalker” to the Googlization of Literature
  8. Judy Malloy donations to the MAL’s early e-literature collection
  9. Artist Residency at the Media Archaeology Lab
  10. It’s Not Digital Humanities – it’s Media Studies
  11. From the Philosophy of the Open to the Ideology of the User-Friendly
  12. D.I.Y. Typewriter Art

2012 19

  1. In-Progress Catalog of the MAL’s Holdings
  2. “The whole world is faking it”: Computer-Generated Poetry as Linguistic Evidence
  3. Media Archaeology and Digital Stewardship
  4. mobile poetics: a select bibliography of digital textuality/art apps
  5. photos of the Media Archaeology Lab’s holdings
  6. Media Studies and Writing Surfaces (introduction to Selected Fiction of John Riddell)
  7. “Reading Writing Interfaces” Book Project Description
  8. Laughing Gland (pdfs)
  9. Greaseball Comics, featuring Milt the Morph as Lonely Fred 2nd issue (part 9)
  10. grOnk magazine, sixth series: issues 1, 2-3, 4, 5, 8 (part 8)
  11. latest addition to the Archeological Media Lab: original “First Screening” 5.25 inch floppies
  12. MLA 2013 Special Session: Reading the Invisible and Unwanted in Old & New Media
  13. MLA 2012 Electronic Literature Exhibit: Impact Report
  14. Recovering Paul Zelevanksy’s literary game “SWALLOWS” (Apple //e, 1985-86)
  15. From the Philosophy of the Open to the Ideology of the User-Friendly
  16. Two-Year Research Fellowship in Digital Curation | University of Colorado Boulder
  17. grOnk magazine, fifth series: issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 (part 7)
  18. grOnk magazine, fourth series: issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 1968-1971 (part 6)
  19. Activist Media Poetics: Electronic Literature Against the Interface-free (MLA 2012)

2011 29

  1. grOnk magazine: third series, issues 3, 4, 7, 8 1969 (part 5)
  2. sifteo cubes in the humanities classroom
  3. Performing E-Literature | E-literature Performing
  4. theory & practice in a flexible, emergent university (part 2)
  5. An Exhibit & Reading of E-literature at MLA 2012
  6. theory & practice in a flexible, emergent university (part 1)
  7. Marshall McLuhan and the Avant-Garde
  8. grOnk magazine: third series, issue 1 1969 (part 4)
  9. on “e-literature” as a field (part 2)
  10. on “e-literature” as a field
  11. MLA 2012 Special Session | Reading Writing Interfaces: E-Literature’s Past & Present
  12. grOnk magazine: first and second series 1967 – 1970 (Part 3)
  13. bpNichol’s “Singing Hands Series”: Canadian Concrete Poetry 1966 (Part 2)
  14. grOnk magazine: Canadian Concrete Poetry 1967-1988 (Part 1)
  15. mapping the new: a mini-review of Dandelion Magazine
  16. introducing the Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
  17. the Apple Mac | a life in computing
  18. from concrete poetry to the poetics of obsolescence: an interview with Derek Beaulieu
  19. The Archeological Media Lab as Locavore Thinking Device
  20. women dirty concrete poets
  21. copier machine poetics
  22. media studies and the typewriter poem
  23. Vectrex game console (1982) | a life in computing
  24. the Compaq III | on the importance of garage sale hopping
  25. E-Poetry Festival: May 17-21st, Buffalo NY
  26. the lab’s latest addition: Compaq Portable III “laptop”
  27. the Apple Lisa | a life in computing
  28. history of the term “dirty concrete”
  29. Welcome to my new virtual home–