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Short abstract:

Amongst calls that ‘the internet is trash’, exists a nostalgia for ‘the good bits’ of the internet. This paper reports on a research workshop called ‘Towards a Positive Internet’, which drew on speculative fiction methods to challenge the perceived internet ‘crisis’.

Long abstract:

Amongst calls that ‘the internet is trash’ (Buck et al., 2020), exists a nostalgia for ‘the good bits’ of the internet. In July 2023, 22 scholars and practitioners from Australia participated in a two-day speculative fiction workshop called ‘Towards a Positive Internet’. This paper reports on this workshop which emerged through a desire to move away from ‘big critique’ (Burgess, 2022) and challenge the perceived internet ‘crisis’. In designing the workshop, we took inspiration from bell hooks’ (2000) ode to love, to strategically and playfully lean into kitsch and femme aesthetics; a juxtaposition to the monochrome and masculine logics that dominate major platforms. In practice, these considerations materialised through confetti, stickers, references to fandom, and tactile activities involving colour, glue, clay, blocks, and collage. The workshop activities scaffolded from reflections on past practices (what did we love about the internet of old?) and moved to present observations (what do we love about the internet now?), before asking the group to speculate and ‘backcast’ from the future, how we get to a positive internet. Participants were generative and generous and offered critical reflections: asking what even is a ‘positive’ internet? for whom? and through what means? Emerging through these engaging discussions were emphatic descriptions of internet nostalgia, including: intimacy with strangers, desires for customisation, the value of interoperability, the counterintuitive joy of the slow and purposeful, and a conviction that a positive internet is not only possible, it presently exists amongst the trash.