How Many Times Has the Internet Already Died?

Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the history of France’s Minitel system, the insights it provides about the modern platform economy, and whether the internet will one day be shut down too.

Kevin Driscoll is the co-author of “Minitel: Welcome to the Internet” with Julian Mailland. He’s also a professor at the University of Washington and the author of the forthcoming book “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.” Follow Kevin on Twitter as @kevindriscoll, or find out more about his Minitel research at minitel.us or @MinitelResearch.

• In November 2020, Paris wrote about the potential future of the internet if the value of digital ads collapsed.
• Vice published an article about the artists on Canada’s pre-internet network, Telidon.
• In “The Internet Revolution,” Richard Barbrook wrote that he thought Britain would eventually import Minitel after experiencing it.
• Other resources mentioned: “The Computerization of Society” by Simon Nora and Alain Minc, and “The Platformization of the Web” by Anne Helmond.

• France’s Start-Up Nation Is a Neoliberal Hell w/ Nastasia Hadjadji
• How the Modem World Shaped the Internet w/ Kevin Driscoll
• Privatizing the Internet Was a Mistake w/ Ben Tarnoff
• Envisioning Platform Socialism w/ James Muldoon