Polina Kolozaridi presents fieldwork from the Club for Internet and Society Enthusiasts examining multiple 'local internets' in post-Soviet Russian cities—an oil-company network in Tyumen, a TV-cable pirate video network in Vladivostok, a university-business hybrid 'Tomnet' in Tomsk, and a cross-generational kindergarten network in Pereslavl-Zalessky—arguing these show the internet's protocols were never singular but path-dependent on local material infrastructures. She proposes the concept of a 'protocol of the protocol' (or missing manifesto): these local internets lacked explicit proclamations distinguishing themselves, which let their histories be erased in favor of the single global internet narrative, a dynamic she warns is repeating with AI's singular origin story.
0:07 I’m very grateful and I’m glad to be here. Um so uh actually um I’m a bit nervous because my story is more about a research field story from uh how we have been studying the internet and it have been that have actually sort of finished but probably not till the end and that still going being something interesting from my point of view. So, I will be telling some stories and I hope we have some time maybe to talk about them afterwards. So, I’m trying to start broadcasting them.
0:48 Yep. And here we are. Um do you see uh one moment.
1:02 Okay. I will try one more time. Um let it be with this strange stripe here.
1:09 I hope you will see the pictures from Russia, you know. Um so my stories are all about the internet and I bring them to you um from our um field work with my colleagues called the club for the internet and society enthusiasts from the uh the found and tells and I wonder nowadays telling about them. You know, uh that the first things we have been researching there during to the sovereign drift is much more historical than we have expected. So, when we are speaking about the global internet now um in different countries uh it seems to be, you know, uh this far um legend uh that is uh supposed to be something natural. And this naturalness of the internet is what brought me actually here uh to speak about the new nature and how uh did we uh fell into this um understanding of our past global internet because as far as I can uh see and um what have we have been researching with our colleagues is that uh there have never been one internet, but there have been a plenty of uh protocols and um different internets.
2:41 Well, the story I will begin with uh it is almost a citation from Ursula Le Guin whom you’ll probably recognize here uh about the internet that could be different, faster than empires and more slow. I have heard not precisely these words, but something very similar uh in the city of two men in middle of Russia.
3:06 Uh it is an oil uh kingdom, let’s say so. And uh people there told us that uh there have been internets for those who uh bring oil from the ground from the underground. Uh but no one have ever heard about the protocols of it. So, it it is a legend. I have no evidence except of some story tellings some stories talk told about it and I have never seen, you know, neither scheme or uh no evidence of that uh internets existing. But [snorts] I like this idea that internet could be different. Uh that it could be not, you know, provided by banking military services, not adopted by big sciences. Um not so global. Uh but it could have been slow.
4:10 And uh uh different protocols would have been uh beyond it. So, inspired by this idea, I went on uh together with my colleagues, and we have been looking for uh whether this um multiple and uh unnamed internets really existed. And our field work was uh different uh were different Russian cities because uh in Russia, you know, uh the internet uh appeared not from the central uh Kremlin or somewhere from the west, but it appeared in different cities. And um uh it was rather material because it was uh uh the it were it was a bunch of connections uh on the boundaries and inside cities. And so, for several years, we have been researching uh in some expeditions how these internets, local internets, have uh been evolving in Russia. And uh our interest was in city scale.
5:13 You know, because anthropologists, of course, and historians, uh we do study the country-level internets, but we suppose that it can be also city level. And that was true. So, this uh you know, story from two men about uh slower than empires uh internet is still a legend, but there are and there were different protocols uh beyond, you know, TCP/IP that could be uh uh um basic protocol. And my interest here is whether uh they still um can be, you know, vivid for understanding what the nets could be. So, um here you see that I do rely on some ideas about the protocol and this is not because I don’t believe in, you know, the internet as a basic idea uh but because I’m interested in boundaries and how protocols divide uh the material worlds as well as the the worlds of uh negotiations and uh conventions and connections and rules, of course.
6:25 Um I wonder here also about decentralization because as far as uh uh the internet is becoming more and more sovereign in Russia, uh I wonder whether these old uh ancestors of the internets in Russia can be uh vivid again and can they be uh important for people who uh do live today with the internet and try to um maintain it. Uh I will tell you the outcomes at the very end and of course it is about Russia, but I think suppose that it can be uh rather interesting for other countries uh where digital sovereignty is also an issue. So, um here from west to east, there are four cities I will tell you about. They all have, you know, uh difficult Russian names like Pereslavl-Zalessky and so on. And uh our uh grassroots uh initiative Club for Internet and Society Enthusiasts.
7:29 So, um we have been looking for the for the internets. So, um several words about theories because I try to bring not only fields but theories as well is about the social technical coupling, of course. And probably my core idea here is is to speak about the infrastructures and what I call infrastructuality. Uh but because it is about the technologies that are visible while they work and uh or invisible while they work and they become visible when the new boundaries arrive or when the old boundaries are not working any longer. And uh finally about the the rules uh the the form of the enterprise of the rules are what are particular what is particularly interesting for me here. And uh I suppose that um every protocol of the internet um s- exists here in two registers. Uh the first one is formal and of course the implicit one which are So, um this uh just a precautions and let’s go to the fields.
8:46 Um nevertheless, we have never seen that oil internet in two men. Uh we have really heard many stories about it. And uh the the thing was that different internet providers uh provided uh not the um similar technical solutions when they just brought the internet uh to the city. And uh it differed whether it was uh like a business account, a university network uh or a a technical uh development and innovation. And uh the idea uh was that the oil workers were the stakeholders of the internet, but they never brought it to the city. And they have always been a boundary between the city and this networks which was called the oil internet and the place where plenty of people lived. The next situation um here is from Vladivostok which is one of the most eastern cities in Russia and there we have seen something like a proto-Netflix from the ’90s.
10:04 Uh it was it was the internet but based on television. Probably you know that also in Germany, in Japan, and other stories of the internets of other countries, there have been nets via the teletext how it was called.
10:22 And it it is the network but not between computers and telephones or whatever it was but between the tele- TV sets.
10:34 Uh but here it was a bit different. It was with no teletext. It was you know a composition of the TV sets and the the wires that were between them and it connected the whole uh big house like with about 50 flats and it interconnected the flats and their TV sets and it was like a pirate pirate bay where the people had actually everything that protocol needs. And when I asked like why do you folks here use it in this way? I mean the internet it can be not only for movies but for plenty of things. They explained that what they supposed to be the internet wasn’t defined at all. And here I bring this maybe important a between the internet and for example AI today when internet came with no prescriptions of how it can be used, what can it be. It was just the technology that what was ahead of
11:48 the rule of how to use it. So also for example in Japan it was um widely used on mobile phones for short music and ringtones and so on.
12:03 While for instance here in Vladivostok we have seen no other Russian city or other local network that would be TV first.
12:14 So um it disappeared actually in 2000s rather early and it was a very weird business model because it couldn’t be broader than several houses and um also due to the material reasons in Vladivostok that is like San Francisco it is with big mountains just on the on the other other part of the ocean. So it couldn’t be um scaled to other parts of the city or parts of the region. So it was abandoned by people this TV internet and they used the the usual basic internet. Um here’s a picture from Tomsk which is actually my hometown but it was the last in our expeditions. However of course I wasn’t inspired by my own experience as well because in Tomsk there was a city scale internet during thousand years and it was like the big internet but almost free for citizens.
13:27 And the protocol on which it was based was really very interesting because it was it was not only the city-scale protocol, but it was also between the universities and the businessmen. These businessmen have haven’t been actually the businessmen in an official sense for the first five years because internet being internet provider wasn’t a business. So, it was a kind of collaboration between some people who could actually care about the wires and all the stuff and have some money for it and gain some money for it and universities which firstly provided both technology and some parts of contact content. However, sooner the local people of course made their own content. And what was also interesting that uh people from Tomsk made mirrors of the big internet. And it wasn’t a problem for them because if a person had something uh in the internet on their work, for example, at the university or wherever, they have been making like hard copies and then uh put it for the access of all the people um around in the local network. So, it was this mirror system uh which was rather fruitful both for city community and uh sometimes people from Tomnet, it was called not internet, but Tomnet, which is Tomsk plus internet, also placed of course some public resources on the big internet. Uh our Tom internet, uh, however, um, a plenty of resources from local forums uh, to some uh, websites about uh, cinema or culture, poetry, and so on. Uh, they have been uh, also for local uh, people and local resources. And um, one probably research uh, not so uh, beautiful thing is that it was quite difficult to study it from outside because you don’t see them from the outside. And uh, the local archive uh, isn’t stable.
15:57 And this is one of the problems and the questions I I try to uh, think about on whether these old um, systems and protocols remain something or somehow important for people who are now here. Or whether they disappear uh, after what? After the uh, material conditions of uh, this or that uh, net disappears or after uh, after some people who have been living there um, become not visible. So, with these questions I went to uh, some theory people whom I trust and one of them was Bruno Latour uh, with this, you know, technology is society made durable. And um, so I thought about it uh, whether it is society made durable via technology. All right. But if so, whether uh, these social norms will become you know, uh, still working after uh, uh, the technological uh, rooms will slightly change like it was in um, for example, uh, Vladivostok because uh, nothing disappeared there.
17:19 The things that existed there still existed. They didn’t disappear, but what changed was my question. And uh when we asked people about the past of their internet lives in for example, 2019.
17:37 And we asked them about what was the uh in your first internet being in internet search and so on, they answered us about the big internet. They didn’t tell us the story of the Tomsk internet of Vladivostok internet. And when I asked my students about the history, they also answer about the global history of the internet. And they never answer about the internet that you was in our first [snorts] in just their own cities. However, they have been living in it. And this was also question about the memory and how how the history of the technological system uh is uh forgotten and whether it can stand for longer times than the social conditions. Uh do these um systems become ruins working as ruins?
18:41 I mean, ruins do not disappear, but uh they help the current infrastructure to uh be vital, uh to be invisible. While the ruins are visible, while people speak about the global internet that was, you know, Tim Berners-Lee and um the declaration of the um cyberspace and so on. Uh these are um for example, the John Perry Barlow’s declaration is an important tool in on which the new empires are built. Uh while these local stories don’t become even ruined. So with these questions, um we went into another research with my peers and uh here is one of the idea. Um I will translate from Russian uh that it is written here, “Our home is the internet, but not only Russia.” And it is the former president of Russia in ’90s, Boris Yeltsin here. And it is a page of one of the newspapers we have studied. We So we have read a plenty of newspapers of that time trying to understand how this durability is constructed. Of course, it is some hardness and the bottom.
19:57 All right, so the society builds some technology that uh follows its rich rights and rituals and uh beliefs, but uh how this legibility is uh constructed as well. So, my idea is uh lack of protocol of the protocol. This is how I call it. Because all these beautiful networks I have been describing, even the legendary network with uh oil, uh vaster than empires and more slow, they didn’t have any manifestos. So, when we as researchers came to these cities and asked people, so uh how’s your internet different from others? They said, “Well, it isn’t.” W- When they told their stories, um on the 15th minute, they told us that the internet in their city or town is completely different from those of that are around. But from the very beginning, they didn’t distinguish their stories. They didn’t have any manifestos.
21:04 Uh they didn’t have the protocols that could be, you know, beyond protocols that could be not material or technical but can be proclaimed and um um make the boundaries of the infrastructure visible. Uh I suppose that it is a a matter of uh yeah, really the protocol of the protocol or maybe a manifesto.
21:33 And this is my idea. I want I will be very glad to to discuss it somehow or maybe uh to uh uh compare it with some contemporary things um because I think about the sustainability of local and multiple technologies that do not, you know, clash into one like it happens also with AI because from my point of view this one and only AI can be the same, you know, somehow problematic in the same way uh as one and only internet uh that uh becomes black boxed as far as we uh think about it as a one story with one origin uh that just scaled from west to east and so on. So, I think here that uh the multiple um stories and um roots of the technologies that are global are really important and for example, with all respect to Dartmouth’s uh seminar as we have been discussing earlier, I also think that uh local histories of uh cybernetics good or bad word, whatever and uh artificial intelligences um could be interesting and I wonder why uh this uh multiplicity, despite for example, you who also um writes and uh tells about it are So, why this multiple stores are forgotten? And I suppose that protocol of the protocol can make the boundaries uh between uh different stores and uh make it more feasible also to transcend these boundaries and to make something more global.
23:22 Um I have one last story, actually, just to as a dessert to all this maybe sad things. I I I I don’t want to finish only on them. And it is uh a kindergarten with a network. So, the most complicated words here uh names of the city is Pereslavl-Zalessky. Just believe me, in Russian it is also complicated. Uh we don’t have all the names like this. And um The people people there it is a very very small town. Uh it is um uh near Moscow in the central part and uh of Russia. And uh uh uh people from both uh scientific organizations and universities live there and they had uh uh um kids, you know. And uh in their kindergarten they have built them one of the first networks in the city. And the idea uh I like the story because it is cross-generational. Uh was that when kids go to the kindergarten and they have the the network where they down uh they upload, um for example, what they draw or what they um programs and so on.
24:37 Uh and their parents are able to see it uh during their work day at work. And in the evening when they meet their kids, they ask them, for example, well what what have you uh been doing there or what your neighbor have been drawing and so on.
24:55 And uh when people thought about it, they never thought thought about what we will call later digital natives and, uh generation who was born with, you know, this one finger at the bottom of their, uh iPhone if they are rich kids. And, uh children learn Logo, for example, there and they, uh started coding something and so on. And, uh uh they shared it with their parents as it was quite essential just to build the uh communication over the physical boundaries and, uh make the community the the city-scale community that also can be scaled afterwards and, uh uh Perislovets Zalessky is one of the example of scalable networks here. And, uh it uh it slowly became just an ordinary city, but with this example of a kindergarten with a network, I still go on thinking that probably there are some things uh that can uh start with different theoretical theoretical basics because, uh social social and technical coupling started there from pedagogy, not from universities, not from, uh business ideas, neither from, you know, innovation or or something like this.
26:23 And, the collective of both uh family level and, uh city level uh were uh uh quite quite, uh uh uh basic for people who lived there and, uh it was probably the only city where people hadn’t had no questions about whether their internets have or their internet have been something interesting and something different from the others. Uh so, this is just one example just not to be a pessimistic as I have probably been introducing the idea of protocols a protocol of the protocols. And here are some of the texts I was citing and also if you’re interested in the article I have written for Nesta about this future and past of post-Soviet internets. And also some ideas.
27:24 Oh, I didn’t add contact. Sorry. But I’m on Discord and I’m here just here with you. Thank you very much for your attention. We have some time if you have questions.
27:37 Yeah, thank you Polina. If anybody has a question, you can just raise your hand and go for it. We’ve got a couple minutes here before Janna’s presentation.
27:55 I I have a a short question. Um I noticed your Discord or not Discord handle, your Substack handle is um swamps and wires. Is that right? Do you Why did you pick that?
28:15 Um just because you have seen this presentation about the wires and there are swamps in Tomsk where I’m from and now I mostly live in St. Petersburg and there are there are swamps around it. And I love the idea that it could not only the oil internet, but also swamp internet and wires. So, it is more aesthetical stuff.
28:41 Yeah, I put it in the chat, but I was just curious like at the beginning of these instantiations of the internet to cross these different cities like there’s like the geographic exposure. So, Vladivostok being, you know, a port city that’s more open to the world versus Tyumen. And then you’ve got like Tomsk, which is more as a university town and it has more of that like intellectual openness. I just wondered how how if that played any role in your in your investigations.
29:14 Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for the question. for the question, Mike. Uh there are some peculiarities. Um for example, one more city was Kazan. And uh it has the best example because all the parts of Kazan are separate from each other. And uh they have been having a really uh unusual marketing competition between different internet performance as well as um So, that it was uh one of these path dependence on the geographical condition. And also, well, about cosmopolitanism of Tomsk, um I’m not sure because if it has been so cosmopolitan, I mean, it is uh Tomsk is supposed to be very uh university and at the same time very global place like um it is more connected with other countries than with with Moscow, for example.
30:15 But in this case, why should it have these walls uh for for for the internet? So, uh actually, there is no very very strict, you know, correlation. Uh however, about Vladivostok, I I actually agree with you because it is a port city and uh uh at the same time it is very far from the center. So, it couldn’t be mimetic towards the practices of other cities. However, for example, Tyumen and Tomsk are close to each other and Tyumen people they wanted to be like people in Tomsk and make their TyumNet because providers were trying to be, you know, uh copying the best practices and so on.
31:02 Uh but they failed due to uh some uh actually uh I suppose more political reasons among themselves, not high policy, but politics and so on. So, there are some correlations, but I don’t have a just a system here. Uh Yeah, there are also some uh some questions in the chat, so I will try to answer. Thank you very much for them. Um but time slot is over now. Um so, I will go to the chat and Discord.
31:39 Thank you, Polina. That was really great. Um yeah, excited to see the conversation continue to unfold in the chat. Um Jenna, you’re up.
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