The Tech Around project is intended to tell the stories that demonstrate the social and cultural history of technology, both in the present and in the past, through a different lens. Through this project we aim to document and share the otherwise unknown and forgotten stories of tech and online cultural history, focusing on diverse subcultures and communities, and documenting the shifting sands of tech, where what is common knowledge and in common use can change seemingly overnight. 

Think of Tech Around as a source of essay-style slow takes about tech and online culture from a critical information studies / political economy perspective. We are shifting our writing here from The Learned Fangirl, our previous publication.

We are starting the Tech Around project with a series called Object Permanence, with essays from both of us. Within the context of child development, object permanence is when children learn that objects and people are not gone when they are no longer seen or heard — that “mommy will be back”. So how does this impact the social and cultural history of technology in our present circumstances when AI can generate fake images, when websites can vanish, when news headlines can be edited without tracking, and even the music we listen to doesn’t have a sense of permanence? 

Welcome!