FEED Issue 18

67 GENIUS INTERVIEW Geert Lovink

FEED: Could you tell us how you got involved in media? I know you started thinking about the political implications of digital media early on. GEERT LOVINK: I started off in the squatters’ movement in Amsterdam. We ran our own independent infrastructure to publish things. I was involved in free radio, cable television initiatives and publishing. Around the mid-80s, we got involved in personal computers, then I had a modem and started using bulletin board systems and the internet, and then we started

building up our own ISPs and community networks, and all from political, cultural, artistic and non-profit perspectives. I also lived in Berlin a lot and was active in eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially in Hungary, Romania and the former Yugoslavia. And I did my PhD in Australia at the University of Melbourne, so I lived there for five years. In 2004, I was appointed research professor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and I founded the Institute of Network Cultures.

GEERT LOVINK The founder of the Institute of Network Cultures, which analyses and shapes the terrain of network cultures

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