"I miss the internet" has become a familiar refrain online. Referencing a popular meme, it is nonsensical but evocative: the phrase prompts us to ask what, exactly, "the internet" refers to. What is being mourned is something more elusive: is it the "old internet", an imagined internet that never fully materialised, or a projection from a future in which today's internet has already become history?

Rather than accepting this internet nostalgia at face value, "I Miss the Internet" asks what this longing actually reveals. Bringing together artists, researchers and practitioners, this day-long programme examines and reimagines the uneven distribution of power embedded in internet standards and infrastructures. The invited contributors recover overlooked figures in internet history, expose and subvert deeply rooted hierarchies, investigate the political and material continuities of network technologies, develop alternative tools that account for the environmental costs of digital systems, and question the inherited conservative logics that continue to shape online spaces.

Together, the programme asks how internet histories might move beyond netstalgia to become critical tools for imagining more equitable futures.

This workshop offers participants the opportunity to explore the early web through the unique interface of the GeoCities Research Institute, an ongoing digital art and archiving project that explores, preserves, and showcases early web vernacular culture using a massive 1-terabyte dataset of rescued GeoCities websites, guided by net artist and vernacular web researcher and keeper of the archive Olia Lialina. 

Working with this archive, participants will investigate thousands of webpages mistakenly dated "Last Updated April 27, 2009" during the archiving process. Rather than relying on distant reading or algorithmic analysis, the workshop invites participants to reconstruct the histories of these pages through close observation, memory and interpretation. Together, participants will ask: How do we recognise the age of a website? What makes something feel "old" online? And what kinds of knowledge emerge when we slow down and read the web on its own terms? 

Participants should bring a laptop with Firefox installed.

The idea of a singular lost internet obscures the many histories, infrastructures and unequal power relations that have always shaped networked technologies. Netstalgia often produces a flattened, idealised image of the past, one that can itself become exploitable, mobilised by platforms and companies that profit from our desire for authenticity, community and perceived simplicity.

Join a panel including Olia Lialina, Winnie Soon and Jonathan Gray for this round table discussion exploring how internet memory, nostalgia and platforms shape our understanding of the web.

Featuring Dana Dawud, Lenyx Dickey, Mariana Marangoni, Lola Odelola, Lucia Rebolino and Kat Macdonald (London Community Laptop Orchestra).

Join us for a series of short presentations and performances exploring alternative internet histories and futures.
Through performance lectures, let’s play, sound performances, live demonstrations and other experimental formats, invited artists and researchers examine the uneven distribution of power embedded in internet standards and infrastructures. Together, they recover overlooked histories, challenge dominant narratives and imagine more equitable digital futures.

I Miss the Internet
presented by Error 417 Expectation Failed & The Photographers' Gallery

Thursday, September 17, 2026
11am - 8pm

The Photographers' Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F7LW 
Nearest station: Oxford Circus (Bakerloo, Central & Victoria lines)

Book tickets via The Photographers' Gallery website.