The Autonomous Web
How can people self-govern their internet experience? How can they obtain autonomy from the internet while still being able to use it according to their needs?
These are the questions at the core of The Autonomous Web, which takes the form of a hybrid publication. In its search for internet autonomy, this publication reimagines the web as two extreme versions of itself. An oppressive, alienating dystopia where users became enslaved by the web, and its polar opposite, a utopian realm where biological life and the autonomous internet exist in true cybernetic harmony.
The negative story takes the form of a comic novel, examining the myriad ways in which the internet cunningly takes away our freedom. In this world, which could be us in a not so distant future, people live in a zombie-like state. Constantly connected to their digital devices, that shun them from reality, they live and die as data generators for the Cloud.
The positive story is a catalogue of experiments, thoughts and behaviours focused on autonomy and the internet. It addresses the nasty aspects of the web as told in the pessimistic story. In doing so, it reimagines the internet as we know it as the speculative Autonomous Web, an internet which is decentralised, where people have control over their own data, identity and actions and where browsing is an embodied and often multi-user experience.
Lastly, the Experimental Handbook for Internet Autonomy is a Zine, which you can print from its digital counterpart. As the physical element of this publication, it takes the experiments and behaviours of the speculative Autonomous Web and turns them into executable ‘human algorithms’, making them tangible tools for collaborative (re)thinking about our relationship to the network.
Read the full publication here.
Interested in reading my research document? Find it here.
Project details
- Programme
- graphic-design
- Practices
- autonomous
- Minor
- Digital Craft