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Oil, Uni and TV: Post-Soviet Infrastructures Shaping Protocols for Web

TalkPolina Kolozaridi
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Oil, Uni and TV: Post-Soviet Infrastructures Shaping Protocols for Web
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Polina Kolozaridi presents fieldwork from the Club for Internet and Society Enthusiasts examining multiple 'local internets' in post-Soviet Russian cities—an oil-company network in Tyumen, a TV-cable pirate video network in Vladivostok, a university-business hybrid 'Tomnet' in Tomsk, and a cross-generational kindergarten network in Pereslavl-Zalessky—arguing these show the internet's protocols were never singular but path-dependent on local material infrastructures. She proposes the concept of a 'protocol of the protocol' (or missing manifesto): these local internets lacked explicit proclamations distinguishing themselves, which let their histories be erased in favor of the single global internet narrative, a dynamic she warns is repeating with AI's singular origin story.

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governanceinfrastructuralitymemorypath-dependency-and-digital-sovereigntypost-soviet-local-internets-tomnet-oil-internet-tv-internetprotocol-of-the-protocol-lack-of-manifestoprotocolsresearchsymposium-2026technology-as-ruins-vs-invisible-infrastructure

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