Our sexual desires built the internet – Mindy Seu

Podcast: SLV LAB ConversationsEpisode: Our sexual desires built the internet – Mindy SeuPub date: 2026-08-07Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationWe spoke with 'the internet's sexual historian' about the surprisingly horny origins of our digital tools, as well as her upcoming communal performance lecture at State Library Victoria. Our digital tools are steeped in pleasure. From mobile phones flooding our senses with stimuli to the yonic nature of the computer mouse (with its clitoral scrolling wheel), to the rise of 'Big Porn', the industry of arousal has played a key part in the development of tools and interfaces through which we access the internet. Who better than "the internet's sexual historian" Mindy Seu to explain how this all came about and explore where it's going? The LA-based artist, technologist and professor joined us ahead of her August performance lecture of The Sexual History of the Internet at State Library Victoria for Now or Never. In conversation with Ana Tiquia, Mindy discussed how internet history can be retold through human sexuality and the collective act of gathering histories and stories without resorting to extraction. Here, phones become performance tools, libraries are cathedrals of polyvocality, and the future of a liberated internet may depend on many small acts of change.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from State Library Victoria, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.