Welcome! You are not alone
Before doomscrolling and dead internet theory became a thing, the internet used to be a place of promise, excitement, and possibility. Surfing the web could be compared to urban flânerie: a surrender to the unexpected, drifting from website to website, from link to link. Serendipitous moments of discovery were free from the aura of suspicion that plagues today’s algorithmically enhanced social media experience (“why am I being shown this content?”), and felt earned, turning linksharing into an act of kinship and community-building.
(W)HOLE shows how, underneath the current desolated surface, the promise of a better digital world is still alive. Understanding the workings and trappings of digital infrastructure is an important first step to revive and fulfill this promise. In the repository, you will find a carefully curated list of initiatives, tools, and resources that aim to study, critique and improve our shared online reality. We invite you to get lost, to find things you didn’t know you were looking for, and to connect with new friends and communities – for the only way to free ourselves from this clusterf*ck, is to do it together.
Welcome! You are not alone
Before doomscrolling and dead internet theory became a thing, the internet used to be a place of promise, excitement, and possibility. Surfing the web could be compared to urban flânerie: a surrender to the unexpected, drifting from website to website, from link to link. Serendipitous moments of discovery were free from the aura of suspicion that plagues today’s algorithmically enhanced social media experience (“why am I being shown this content?”), and felt earned, turning linksharing into an act of kinship and community-building.
(W)HOLE shows how, underneath the current desolated surface, the promise of a better digital world is still alive. Understanding the workings and trappings of digital infrastructure is an important first step to revive and fulfill this promise. In the repository, you will find a carefully curated list of initiatives, tools, and resources that aim to study, critique and improve our shared online reality. We invite you to get lost, to find things you didn’t know you were looking for, and to connect with new friends and communities – for the only way to free ourselves from this clusterf*ck, is to do it together.
And Also Too – Community-Accountable Design
And Also Too – Community-Accountable Design
Summary
A design studio focusing on co-design and community-accountable technology, offering resources like analog tools for tracking health data and advocating for consent-based tech interactions.
CoMotion Projects
CoMotion Projects
Summary
A UK-based community interest company creating playful, inclusive creative technology spaces for neurodivergent artists to explore digital media, immersive experiences and creative tech.
DFOS – Digital Futures of Sound
DFOS – Digital Futures of Sound
Summary
DFOS (Digital Futures of Sound) is a platform exploring the intersection of sound, technology, and sustainability. It connects artists, researchers, and technologists working on open and responsible approaches to sound production and digital infrastructure.
Grow by Ginkgo
Grow by Ginkgo
Summary
Grow by Ginkgo supports bio-designers working with living materials. It promotes regenerative production and research at the intersection of biotechnology, ecology, and creativity.
Autistici/Inventati
Autistici/Inventati
Summary
A volunteer-run Italian non-profit that provides activists and grassroots collectives with free digital communication tools without data commodification, emphasising autonomy and solidarity.
Matters of Activity. Image Space Material
Matters of Activity. Image Space Material
Summary
An interdisciplinary research cluster that explores materials, images and spaces as active components of culture and technology.
New Practice
New Practice
Summary
A design studio working at the intersection of architecture, civic engagement, and social innovation, creating participatory infrastructures that empower local communities.
Our Data Bodies Project (ODB)
Our Data Bodies Project (ODB)
Summary
Our Data Bodies is a community research initiative that investigates how data-driven systems impact marginalized communities. It offers workshops, toolkits, and advocacy resources to help people understand, control, and protect their digital bodies.
Oikodesign Office
Oikodesign Office
Summary
Oikodesign Office is a collective design practice focused on ecological transition and regenerative systems. Through material research, spatial design, and public engagement, it explores how design can cultivate sustainable relations between urban environments and natural ecosystems.
The Feminist Institute
The Feminist Institute
Summary
Documents and digitises feminist cultural archives to build a global, open repository of feminist contributions and make them accessible to students, researchers and the public
Green Web Foundation – Grid-Aware Websites Project
Green Web Foundation – Grid-Aware Websites Project
Summary
Open-source toolkit to make sites “grid-aware”: use CDN edge runtimes to detect local grid intensity and adapt pages, reducing impact and supporting a fossil-free internet.
Forensic Architecture
Forensic Architecture
Summary
A research agency investigating human rights violations through architectural analysis, open-source data, and digital visualization to expose violence and state oppression.
Open Source Publishing (OSP)
Open Source Publishing (OSP)
Summary
A collective of designers using and developing open-source tools for graphic design, exploring how collaborative software reshapes creative practice and authorship.
ATNOFS - Varia
ATNOFS - Varia
Summary
A collective exploration of alternative networked systems, developing tools, workshops, and protocols that support local, feminist, and community-run digital infrastructures outside centralized platforms.
The Green Web Foundation
The Green Web Foundation
Summary
An organisation working to decarbonize the internet by providing tools, research, and training that help individuals and companies understand, measure, and reduce the environmental impact of digital services.
Trans Europe Halles
Trans Europe Halles
Summary
Trans Europe Halles unites 170+ independent arts centres across 40+ countries, supporting communities in transforming abandoned spaces into cultural hubs that foster social and environmental justice.
Cultural and Creative Spaces and Cities
Cultural and Creative Spaces and Cities
Summary
CCSC is an EU-co-funded project linking cultural spaces and cities through policy, led by Trans Europe Halles and a consortium of ten public and non-profit organisations.
Red de Espacios y Agentes de Cultura Comunitaria
Red de Espacios y Agentes de Cultura Comunitaria
Summary
REACC defines community culture as any artistic practice that engages agents and communities in collaborative and transformative creative processes.
Feeling Of – Episode 044: The Internet’s Emotional Infrastructure
Feeling Of – Episode 044: The Internet’s Emotional Infrastructure
Summary
A podcast episode exploring how online platforms shape emotional experiences and relationships, and how communities build care-based digital environments.
Black, Loved & Free Podcast
Black, Loved & Free Podcast
Summary
A podcast celebrating Black healing, joy, and liberation through conversations on love, identity, and justice across personal and collective digital spaces.
Accessible Nightlife and Queer Spaces – Leonard Cheshire Podcast
Accessible Nightlife and Queer Spaces – Leonard Cheshire Podcast
Summary
A podcast episode discussing how nightlife and queer spaces can become more accessible and inclusive for disabled people, highlighting the intersection of joy, identity, and access.
Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene
Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene
Summary
A design anthology examining how automation, planetary computation, extraction, and machine systems reshape architecture, landscapes, and human agency in the emerging Post-Anthropocene era.
Last In, First Out – Network Archaeology of/as the Stack
Last In, First Out – Network Archaeology of/as the Stack
Summary
Rory Solomon reads the ‘stack’-from push/pop to layered infrastructures-as both object and method in media archaeology, reframing how networks are studied beyond simple histories.
VOLUME 51: Augmented Technology – Archis
VOLUME 51: Augmented Technology – Archis
Summary
Architecture/design issue on how pervasive tech reshapes space and society. With essays by Valla, Okoye, Land et al., plus a 32-page Rotor “Deconstruction” insert via Jacob Bakema Study Centre.
Building Community – A Third World Guide to Collectives by Kresta Doxsee et al.
Building Community – A Third World Guide to Collectives by Kresta Doxsee et al.
Summary
Building Community is a foundational guide exploring how collective structures can sustain mutual aid, shared governance, and self-managed infrastructures. It connects cooperative living with political empowerment and offers practical insights into building equitable, resilient communities.
No! Against Adult Supremacy – Archive.org
No! Against Adult Supremacy – Archive.org
Summary
A radical anthology challenging systemic hierarchies and power relations between adults and youth, linking struggles for liberation across social and digital spheres.
The Slow Grind: How Productivity Culture Harms Bodies and the Earth – Atmos
The Slow Grind: How Productivity Culture Harms Bodies and the Earth – Atmos
Summary
An article connecting ecofeminism, disability justice, and anti-capitalist critique, showing how productivity culture exploits both human and planetary bodies.
Complexity and Contradiction in Infrastructure (Avery Review)
Complexity and Contradiction in Infrastructure (Avery Review)
Summary
Essay exploring the messy realities of infrastructure beyond simplified techno-solutionism.
Server Manifesto: Data Center Architecture and the Future of Democracy
Server Manifesto: Data Center Architecture and the Future of Democracy
Summary
Architect Niklas Maak examines how data centers-today's civic megastructures-shape politics, cities and climate, arguing for democratic, public-oriented design of the cloud’s physical infrastructure.
The Circular Design Lab – TU Delft Open Books
The Circular Design Lab – TU Delft Open Books
Summary
An open-access publication exploring methods and tools for circular design, integrating sustainability, systems thinking, and collaborative learning in design practice.
Dan McQuillan "Resisting AI"
Dan McQuillan "Resisting AI"
Summary
An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company
Summary
Founded in 1886, Charles H. Kerr is one of the oldest radical publishers in the U.S., dedicated to labor, social justice, and anti-capitalist thought. Its catalog preserves and circulates critical works that challenge dominant narratives of history, economy, and technology.
What Is To Be Done – CJTheX
What Is To Be Done – CJTheX
Summary
A radical reflection on creative resistance in the digital age, questioning compliance with technological systems and exploring collective forms of refusal and imagination.
Comment – Care at Scale
Comment – Care at Scale
Summary
An essay exploring how care can scale beyond the personal, proposing systems thinking as a path toward social and digital ethics rooted in responsibility.
Critical Publishing – Learning-by-Publishing at CML Basel
Critical Publishing – Learning-by-Publishing at CML Basel
Summary
CML Basel’s project fostering peer-to-peer, research-based publishing where students co-create outputs, test collective workflows, and critically reflect on how and for whom we share.
Diagram
Diagram
Summary
Standalone diagram image referenced in research on infrastructures/media (context via linked image).
Dark Forest Anthology Vol. 2 – Metalabel
Dark Forest Anthology Vol. 2 – Metalabel
Summary
A collective anthology exploring digital subcultures, creative resistance, and alternative models of collaboration beyond the attention economy.
Jiminy Panoz, "The Reflowable Ebook"
Jiminy Panoz, "The Reflowable Ebook"
Summary
Documents how everyday digital infrastructures rely on hidden labour and global flows of materials, encouraging readers to trace the life-cycle behind “connected” systems.
"Next Stage of Global Capitalism: Digital Platforms and Rentier Capitalism"
"Next Stage of Global Capitalism: Digital Platforms and Rentier Capitalism"
Summary
Offers a peer-reviewed analysis of economic and governance dynamics, showing how financial systems influence public infrastructures and decision-making.
Designer’s Guide to Accessibility Research (Google)
Designer’s Guide to Accessibility Research (Google)
Summary
Guide for conducting accessibility research ethically and effectively in design teams.
The Digital Condition – Rietveld Academie Design Blog Publication
The Digital Condition – Rietveld Academie Design Blog Publication
Summary
A collective publication by students of the Rietveld Academie exploring how digital technologies affect culture, authorship, and learning. The essays examine post-internet aesthetics, user agency, and decolonial approaches to digital design education.
Archaeologies and Organologies: Toward an Understanding of Media Materialism - Leonardo Journal (MIT Press)
Archaeologies and Organologies: Toward an Understanding of Media Materialism - Leonardo Journal (MIT Press)
Summary
An academic essay tracing the material, historical, and philosophical dimensions of media technologies, linking computation to planetary and cultural infrastructures.
Do Not Research – Issue 007 (Metalabel)
Do Not Research – Issue 007 (Metalabel)
Summary
The seventh issue of Do Not Research gathers essays and artworks exploring online countercultures, refusal, and speculative aesthetics. It examines how digital communities resist algorithmic homogenization and reclaim agency through creative misuse, collective experimentation, and critical humor.
Counter Mapping – Emergence Magazine
Counter Mapping – Emergence Magazine
Summary
An exploration of “counter-mapping” as a decolonial practice that reclaims geography from extractive and colonial frameworks, emphasizing storytelling, memory, and local knowledge.
The Slow Media Manifesto – Mindful, Sustainable Media
The Slow Media Manifesto – Mindful, Sustainable Media
Summary
English translation of the 2010 manifesto: fourteen principles for mindful, sustainable media-monotasking, quality, hospitality-like Slow Food for information and culture.
Jiang Gaoming – Chinese Botanist, Ecologist & Conservation Advocate
Jiang Gaoming – Chinese Botanist, Ecologist & Conservation Advocate
Summary
Born 1964 in Shandong, Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He champions ecological restoration, critiques blind tree-planting, and promotes letting nature recover naturally.
Laziness Does Not Exist – Devon Price (Wikipedia Entry)
Laziness Does Not Exist – Devon Price (Wikipedia Entry)
Summary
This Wikipedia entry presents the work of social psychologist Devon Price, who challenges the myth of laziness as a moral failing. The book and its discourse expose how capitalist and digital productivity systems exploit burnout, guilt, and self-surveillance.
Errant Bodies Press
Errant Bodies Press
Summary
An independent publishing platform focusing on experimental practices in sound, performance, and critical spatial research, fostering alternative modes of artistic and theoretical inquiry.
The Extractive Growth of Artificially Intelligent Real Estate – Failed Architecture
The Extractive Growth of Artificially Intelligent Real Estate – Failed Architecture
Summary
Failed Architecture examines how AI-driven real estate amplifies extraction and inequality, revealing the material and political dimensions of digital urbanism.
Future Art Ecosystems – Building 21st-Century Cultural Infrastructure
Future Art Ecosystems – Building 21st-Century Cultural Infrastructure
Summary
Serpentine’s briefings on how art + advanced tech (AI, metaverse, web3, creative R&D) can shape public-good cultural infrastructure and practice.
A Look into Black Queer Women in Feminism Over the Years – GLAAD
A Look into Black Queer Women in Feminism Over the Years – GLAAD
Summary
Published by GLAAD, this article traces the influence of Black queer women in shaping feminist movements across generations. It highlights their role in expanding the politics of care, inclusion, and representation within both activism and digital culture.
Beginner’s Guide to IPFS (Hackernoon)
Beginner’s Guide to IPFS (Hackernoon)
Summary
Introductory article explaining InterPlanetary File System concepts and use-cases.
Carbon-Aware Design Patterns (Hackernoon)
Carbon-Aware Design Patterns (Hackernoon)
Summary
Argues that code and software development carry hidden carbon costs, and presents “carbon-aware design patterns” to help reduce energy-intensity in digital systems.
The History of User Interfaces – Interactive Timeline
The History of User Interfaces – Interactive Timeline
Summary
Interactive timeline of UIs with side-by-side screenshots of classic GUIs-from Xerox PARC/Smalltalk to Mac, Windows, Amiga, GNOME-browse by year, compare designs, and spot patterns.
The Humane Web Manifesto
The Humane Web Manifesto
Summary
A collective call for a more ethical, inclusive, and compassionate web that prioritizes human wellbeing over engagement metrics and profit-driven design.
The Movement of Refusal
The Movement of Refusal
Summary
Published by ill will, this essay explores refusal as a collective strategy against domination. It analyzes how disobedience, withdrawal, and inoperativity function as political gestures that disrupt capitalist and technological systems of control.
"A Typology of Crowdwork Platforms"
"A Typology of Crowdwork Platforms"
Summary
Develops a typology of crowdwork platforms, mapping their variants and exposing the regulatory, coordination and labour-control issues in the gig economy.
"The emergence of algorithmic solidarity: unveiling mutual aid practices and resistance among Chinese delivery workers"
"The emergence of algorithmic solidarity: unveiling mutual aid practices and resistance among Chinese delivery workers"
Summary
Examines how Chinese food-delivery riders use algorithmic games and private chat groups (WeChat) to build mutual aid networks and resist platform governance.
The Internet Mapping Project
The Internet Mapping Project
Summary
Invites people to draw their mental map of the Internet, turning intangible network space into folk-cartography and revealing how we perceive digital infrastructures.
Resisting Ableism, Queering Desirability – Kohl Journal
Resisting Ableism, Queering Desirability – Kohl Journal
Summary
A critical essay exploring the intersections of disability, queerness, and desirability, challenging ableist norms and proposing inclusive frameworks for embodiment and intimacy.
Access Intimacy: The Missing Link – Mia Mingus (Leaving Evidence)
Access Intimacy: The Missing Link – Mia Mingus (Leaving Evidence)
Summary
Mia Mingus introduces the concept of “access intimacy” - the feeling of mutual understanding that emerges when access needs are anticipated and met, reframing accessibility as an act of care.
To Be a Technologist Is to Be Human – Letters to a Young Technologist
To Be a Technologist Is to Be Human – Letters to a Young Technologist
Summary
A reflective essay urging technologists to reconnect technology with human values, empathy, and ethics, redefining innovation as a form of collective responsibility.
The Queer Disabled Community: Intersections of Inclusion – LiveMint
The Queer Disabled Community: Intersections of Inclusion – LiveMint
Summary
A feature exploring the lived experiences of queer and disabled people, highlighting overlapping struggles and the need for more inclusive social and cultural infrastructures.
Future Histories – Lizzie O’Shea
Future Histories – Lizzie O’Shea
Summary
Future Histories by Lizzie O’Shea reclaims radical thinkers-from Mary Wollstonecraft to James Baldwin-to imagine alternative digital futures. The book connects historical struggles for justice with today’s technological systems, offering frameworks for resistance, policy, and collective imagination.