A brief history of folklore and technology.
At EMF2016, I talked about numbers stations - mysterious, Cold War shortwave radio stations. After doing that talk, I realised that the thing that I find most interesting about the numbers stations is how they became an urban myth, a living legend of the networked age.
For EMF2018, I'll examine the intersections of technology and folklore. I'll have a look at examples of our old folklore and superstitions following us into the spaces created by new technologies, and I'll also be looking at new folk tales that arise from our technologies, from World War II gremlins to Slenderman and the new cults of AI and Big Data.
