OII 25th Anniversary Public Lecture. Dreaming of a Networked World: Reflections on the Political Economy of the Internet

About

2026 marks 25 years of the Oxford Internet Institute. To celebrate this milestone, we’re holding a series of events throughout the year. We invite you to join our celebrations on the 15th June for this lecture and drinks reception.

Abstract

It’s easy to scoff at Facebook’s old mission to “connect the world,” but the stark reality is that many of us genuinely believed that the internet could be used to empower everyday people in new and uplifting ways. We were hopeful. We were also naive. We were focused on what youth and hobbyists and activists were doing with the new tool at their disposal. We weren’t attending to how the rich and powerful were limiting which futures were possible in order to ensure that their desired futures were inevitable.

Sociotechnical futures are never inevitable. Many people have leveraged the internet to do things that strengthen humanity. And yet, there is little doubt that parts of the internet are now a toxic dumpster fire. As we watch a new and powerful technology emerge and gobble up the internet, we are once again forced to reckon with how political and economic forces interact to configure futures. What AI will become is still unknown, but whether it is primarily a benevolent or malignant force depends on choices we make today.

In this talk, danah will weave through internet pasts, presents, and future to shed light on the good, bad, and ugly so that we may leverage our knowledge of what happened in pursuit of a more just and generous future.

 

Schedule

5:15-5:25pm: Arrival

5:30-6:30pm: Lecture and Q&A

6:30-7:30pm: Drinks Reception

 

About the Speaker

danah boyd is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and society, with an eye towards how structural inequities shape and are shaped by sociotechnical systems.

Her upcoming book “Data are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census” is an ethnography of the US Census Bureau, Jenga politics, and the struggle to make democracy’s data. She has also conducted research on media manipulation, privacy practices, social media, and teen culture. Her monograph “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” has received widespread praise.

She founded the research institute Data & Society, where she currently serves as an advisor. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, a fellow of AAAS, a non-residential fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a trustee of the Computer History Museum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the advisory board of Electronic Privacy Information Center. Previously, she worked at Microsoft Research. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University, a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a Ph.D in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.

danah’s new book Data Are Made, Not Found. A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census, will publish in September 2026.

Blog: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
Twitter: @zephoria