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A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET reveals the pervasive and perverted origins of our digital tools. How have technologies shaped and been shaped by sexuality? Together, we will examine the relationships between techno-development and sexuality, innovation and autonomy, lust and extraction. In this participatory lecture performance, citations are read aloud by you, the audience, through a shared script on your mobile device. It is a performance of re-citation.  

This book is a history. 
It gathers anecdotes, artworks, and historical artifacts that reveal the pervasive and perverted origins of our digital tools.

This book is a script. 
It documents A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET, a participatory lecture performance told through the audience’s phones. It is a polyvocal story, whose citations are read aloud by the audience — performance as re-citation.  

This book is an experiment.  
This book is a financial experiment of redistribution. In it, you’ll find citations by 45 people who shaped a new understanding of the internet, sex, and sexual technologies. When you buy this book, they will split 30% of profits through “Citational Splits” — a new model of attribution. 

Credits:  
Designer: Laura Coombs
Editor: Meg Miller 
Lecture Format Collaborator: Julio Correa 
Illustrator: Ven Qiu 
Timecode Scripting: Jon Gacnik 
Videographer: Gabriel Noguez 
3D Artist: Tom Hancocks 
Website Support: Charles Broskoski 
Metalabel: Yancey Strickler, Lena Imamura 

Mindy Seu (b. 1991, California) is an artist and technologist based in Los Angeles and New York City whose practice focuses on technology-driven performance and publication. A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET (2025) follows her first book CYBERFEMINISM INDEX (2023), a pseudo-encyclopedia that gathers three decades of online activism and net art, which was commissioned by Rhizome, premiered at the New Museum, and awarded a Graham Foundation Grant. Mindy is currently teaching as an Associate Professor at University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Design Media Arts. 
mindyseu.com
instagram.com/mindyseu

This Instagram-Stories-as-Lecture format was first conceived of by Julio Correa in Seu’s Lecture Performance studio course (Fall 2023) at Yale School of Art. Seu further developed this format, in collaboration with Correa, for A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET.