Internet Archives - Public Seminar

Music

Hold Onto This

Why young queer artists and music lovers are turning again to physical media like zines and tapes

March 25, 2026 • by Eva Szilardi-Tierney

For Rox Eckroth and August Simon, the idea of putting together a tape compilation of songs from trans artists came as much from their interest in the history of cassettes as it did from a desire to collate trans art. “You put a tape in the machine, you hit play. It ...

Art & Design

Joanna Walsh’s E-Elegy

Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters offers a remembrance of posts past

December 10, 2025 • by Eva Szilardi-Tierney

Here’s a theory: The posts, tags, and profiles that constitute the internet are all works of art, produced by amateur artists. Whether or not these amateurs recognize their work’s “artiness” is irrelevant; participation on the internet requires acts of intentional creation and studied self-representation, with the express purpose of display, ...

Social Research

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of Social Research

The New School journal introduces its latest issue

November 10, 2022 • by Social Research

The Fall 2022 issue of Social Research tackles the subject of conspiracy thinking, from ungoverning to elective affinity....

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of <em>Social Research</em>

The Arts

Docking the Long Tail of Culture

How mass culture has scored a decisive victory in the age of the Internet

November 9, 2022 • by W. David Marx

In the past, the difficulty of acquiring long-tail content suggested that a person had many underlying status assets, such as intelligence, curiosity, and deep knowledge. When anyone can find anything obscure on the Internet within minutes, acquisition alone reveals no virtues or skills....

Capitalism

The Rat Race of Prestige and Boredom

W. David Marx on how status affects human behavior

November 9, 2022 • by Alla Anatsko and W. David Marx

The whole idea of cultural capital is knowing what objects to buy, how to arrange them, how to behave—all of these things go together. Just because you can purchase an object does not mean you can get into the group....

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

The New School

The New School in Cyberspace

Teaching online? The New School’s been doing it for 35 years

June 15, 2020 • by Tina Yagjian

Beginning in mid-March, as the novel coronavirus bore down on the country, The New School moved all of its courses online. A response to the social distancing required to contain the spread of COVID-19, The New School’s students and faculty scrambled to recreate learning environments that had seemed to be ...

Democracy

The Business of Disinformation

In Central and eastern Europe, political disinformation is highly profitable

May 7, 2020 • by Judit Szakács

Since February 2019, the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University has been mapping individuals and companies running or owning disinformation websites in five central and eastern European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. The goal is to collect data on independent (i.e. not ...

Interviews

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

UTA’s Byrd Leavell calls Caroline Calloway “unwell” and regrets his association with the President

April 21, 2020 • by Alexa Mauzy

Leavell is a literary agent, currently at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of Hollywood’s most powerful agencies, representing artists and other professionals in the entertainment industry. Based in Beverly Hills, it has divisions focused on film, television, digital, video games, and music, in addition to books. As the agency’s mission statement puts it, “We help ...

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

Politics

Another Media Regime is Possible

From the liberal public sphere to the information commons

January 29, 2020 • by Dan Hind

‘Media regimes’ can be described as distinct historical combinations of technology, regulation and professional norms that have come to seem natural but are the result of an intensely political and fiercely contested process. (1) Until recently, English-language media regimes were characterized by a mixture of regulated broadcasters and privately owned ...

Politics

Can the Internet Be Governed By Its Users?

A response to Dan Hind

January 29, 2020 • by Micah L. Sifry

Consider Wikipedia, the global encyclopedia that is open to anyone to edit, which is the only nonprofit website that ranks in the top ten most visited in the world -- let alone the top 100. It is all the things that Hind wants: a public platform, transparent in its operations ...

Can the Internet Be Governed By Its Users?

Interviews

Heaven and Hell in the Living Room: An Interview With Helen Schulman

The New School creative writing professor talks about her latest novel, Come with Me

March 8, 2019 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham and Helen Schulman

At the center of the story is Amy -- partner of Dan, parent of the teenage Jack and twins Miles and Theo, and, most recently, employee of Donny, her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old geek-savant son. Donny has hired Amy as PR rep and guinea pig for his new project, Furrier.com, a ...