We Were Building the Internet Before It Existed
What pirate radio got right about media — and what we lost when everything moved online
Before there were platforms, we had transmitters. Before there were followers, we had frequencies, and before the internet became the center of everything, we were already building networks — out of air.
We had content. Live jazz sets. Experimental noise. Two-minute audio pieces. Conversations that drifted somewhere between performance and philosophy. Nothing was focus-grouped. Nothing was optimized. It was immediate. We had a network. Not digital — but real.
Musicians brought other musicians. Filmmakers brought cameras. Someone knew someone who knew someone. A comic book store clerk introduces a free jazz legend. A video store employee brings in a filmmaker. An internet startup worker starts streaming music videos by day and broadcasting pirate radio by night.
It spread. Not through links — but through people. We even had something like “mobile radio.” We started lending out the transmitter. Take it to a party. Take it to a rooftop. Take it to another neighborhood. A station without a fixed location. A signal that could appear and disappear. It wasn’t an app but it behaved like one before we even had mobile cell phones.
And we had identity — but a different kind. You didn’t build a brand. You built a presence. Sometimes you used a DJ name. Sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you were a DJ. Sometimes you were just the person who showed up and helped. There were no profiles. No metrics. No permanent record. There was just participation.
At the same time, the official version of media was consolidating. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, companies like Clear Channel Communications began scaling radio into something efficient, predictable, and controlled. Fewer owners. More stations. Identical playlists. Their logic was simple: Centralize → standardize → monetize.
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What followed a different logic: Decentralize → experiment → share.
A few years later, I started working in early streaming media. We were encoding live performances, compressing video into tiny windows, tracking views. At first, the audience was small. Then it grew. Then it exploded.
Broadband replaced dial-up. Audio improved. Video sharpened. Everything became faster, clearer, more accessible. It felt like progress, and in many ways, it was.
But something didn’t make the transition. In pirate radio, you didn’t know who was listening. There were no analytics. No dashboards. No feedback loops telling you what worked and what didn’t. You broadcast into uncertainty, and that uncertainty created a kind of freedom.
Online, everything became measurable. Metrics. Views. Likes. Shares. Engagement. The network scaled — but it also narrowed.
Content adapted to the system. Voices adapted to the metrics. Distribution became dependent on platforms. The airwaves had been open. The internet was owned. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s structure.
Pirate radio worked because it removed friction. No permission. No gatekeepers. Minimal cost. Immediate output. In theory, the internet was supposed to do the same thing. At first, it did, but over time, the system changed. Platforms replaced protocols. Visibility replaced presence. Optimization replaced experimentation. We gained reach. We lost something harder to define.
Sometimes I think about those nights under the bridge. The weak signal. The strong connections. The feeling that something was happening, even if we couldn’t measure it. We didn’t have an audience. We had a network, and for a brief moment, that was enough to build something surprising and real.
Pirate Frequencies is a project about that moment — when media was still open, still uncertain, and still full of possibility.
