internet manifestos are not written only for humans ***** internet manifestos are not always serious ***** internet manifestos are not always countercultural ***** internet manifestos are not something else ***** internet manifestos are not self-fulfilling prophecies ***** internet manifestos are not bestsellers ***** internet manifestos are not about internet ***** internet manifestos are not fiction ***** internet manifestos are not non-fiction ***** internet manifestos are not only manifestos ***** internet manifestos are not wish-lists ***** internet manifestos are not always read ***** internet manifestos are not just pixels ***** internet manifestos are not lost in cyber space ***** internet manifestos are not up for sale ***** internet manifestos are not comforting ***** internet manifestos are not the end of the world ***** internet manifestos are not to laugh at ***** internet manifestos are not written only by humans ***** internet manifestos are not over

Further Reading

Did you see our essays? If not, maybe this is a good place to start!

"The Futures We Lost, The Futures We Still Imagine: Cyberfeminism After Hope"by Meda Urbonaitė.

"Manifestos and Their Zeitgeist" by Maria Anastasia Scharff.

"TITLE" by Laurenz Cushion.

Internet manifesto collections

For a deeper dive into the internet manifesto archives you should check out the heart of the project: the Web Directory of Internet Manifestos organised by Paz Sastre Domínguez.

Jack into Beyond Cyberpunk! and explore the Manifestos Zone.

Learn about the relevance of the early web in Manifestos of the Web Revival by MelonLand Wiki.

Browse through the collection made by italian hackers in the early 2000s in Hacker Culture.

Books and articles

As we started the seminar, there haven't been many research texts on internet manifestos (in English) to rely on.

A couple of exceptions that we could find:

  • Hanna, J. (2019). “Future Shock”: Manifestos in the Digital Age. Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, 20.
  • Foster, E. K. (2020). Histories of Technology Culture Manifestos: Their Function in Shaping Technology Cultures and Practices. Digital Culture & Society, 6(1), 57-84.
  • Monot, P.-H. (2023). Poor, Nasty, British, and Short. Contemporary Pamphleteering, Popular Literacy, and the Politics of Literary Circulation. In M. Gamper, J. Müller-Tamm, D. Wachter, & J. Wrobel (Eds.), Der Wert der literarischen Zirkulation / The Value of Literary Circulation (Vol. 3, pp. 173–185). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
  • Tselenti, D. (2022). Branding the manifesto. Culture, Theory and Critique, 63(2–3), 206–219.
  • van Dijck, J., & Nieborg, D. (2009). Wikinomics and its discontents: A critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos. New Media & Society, 11(5), 855–874.

While not touching upon manifestos themselves, some other academic books and articles are helpful to provide historical context and theoretical approaches.

Internet History and Web History

  • Apprich, C., & Derieg, A. (2017). Technotopia: A media genealogy of Net cultures. Rowman & Littlefield international.
  • Bory, P. (2020). The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies. University of Westminster Press.
  • Brügger, N., Milligan, I. (Eds.) (2019). The SAGE Handbook of Web History. SAGE Publications.
  • Katz-Kimchi, M. (2015). “Singing the strong light works of [American] engineers”: Popular histories of the Internet as mythopoetic literature. Information & Culture, 50(2), 160–180.
  • Mansell, R. (2012). Imagining the Internet: Communication, Innovation, and Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Natale, S. (2016). Unveiling the Biographies of Media: On the Role of Narratives, Anecdotes, and Storytelling in the Construction of New Media's Histories. Communication Theory, 26(4), 431-449.
  • Streeter, T. (2011). The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism and the Internet.
  • Streeter, T. 1999, “That Deep Romantic Chasm”: Libertarianism, Neoliberalism, and the Computer Culture. In: Calabrese A., Burgelman J-C. (Eds.), Communication, Citizenship, and Social Policy: Re-Thinking the Limits of the Welfare State. Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 49–64.
  • Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University of Chicago Press.
  • Alberto Lusoli and Fred Turner. “It’s an Ongoing Bromance”: Counterculture and Cyberculture in Silicon Valley—An Interview with Fred Turner. Journal of Management Inquiry 2021 30:2, 235-242.
  • Finn, M., & DuPont, Q. (2020). From closed world discourse to digital utopianism: the changing face of responsible computing at Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (1981–1992). Internet Histories, 4(1), 6–31.

Manifesto history and theory

  • Lyon, J. (1999). Manifestoes: Provocations of the modern. Cornell University Press.
  • Hanna, J. (2020). The Manifesto Handbook: 95 Theses on an Incendiary Form. Zero Books.
  • Ariel, N. (2021). Language games with ‘Manifesto’, Culture, Theory and Critique.
  • Tselenti, D. (2022). Branding the manifesto. Culture, Theory and Critique, 63(2–3), 206–219.

Early internet subcultures and movements

  • Craig, J. (2021). Cypherpunk ideology: objectives, profiles, and influences (1992–1998) pp. 315-342
  • Hepp, A. (2024). Curators of digital futures: The life cycle of pioneer communities. New Media & Society, 27(9), 5390-5409.
  • Evans, C. L. (2014, December 11). An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists. Vice.
  • Paasonen, S. (2005). Figures of fantasy: Internet, women & cyberdiscourse. Peter Lang.