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Geert Lovink: Extinction Internet (Paperback, 2022, Institute of Network Cultures) 3 stars

Networking at the end of time

3 stars

Extinction Internet is a nice artistic object, a good pocket-sized bite of theory and meme-aesthetic that satisfies a need to keep up to date with one of the thought-leaders on network theory. The text is the inaugural lecture delivered by author Lovink for his new position as head of Network Cultures at the University of Amsterdam.

Overall, this is like other pieces of Lovink's writing but more concise and delivered as a call to action. It is nice to read to keep on the pulse of contemporary theory, and it finishes dramatically, but I would only recommend this to people who are already interested in network theory. Strangely for a lecture from 2022, if it had been delivered only a few months later I think the references to AI would have been much more pronounced as they line up with many of Lovink's predictions. Perhaps that is for the next lecture.