ARCHAEOBYTOLOGY: Theory, Practice, and Institution Building

A Comprehensive Textbook

Edited by [To Be Determined]

Book Information

Publisher: MIT Press (or open-access equivalent)
Format: 600-700 pages, hardcover + open-access PDF
Audience: Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, practitioners
Pedagogy: Each chapter includes case studies, discussion questions, exercises, further reading
Companion Website: archaeobytology.org (with datasets, tools, tutorials)

Book Structure

The textbook follows the 101 → 200 → 300 curriculum progression, divided into 5 Parts (18 chapters total):

PART I: FOUNDATIONS (Chapters 1-6)

What is Archaeobytology?

Chapter 1: Introduction to Archaeobytology

Author: [Lead editor, discipline founder]

Contents:

• What is Archaeobytology? (Definition, scope, why it matters)

• A Brief History of Digital Mortality (From floppy disks to platform shutdowns)

• The Three Pillars: Declaration, Connection, Ground

• Why We Need a Discipline (Not just digital history or media studies)

• How to Use This Book (Roadmap for instructors and students)

Case Study: The GeoCities Shutdown (2009)—30 million sites murdered overnight

Discussion Questions:

1. Is digital preservation a technical problem or a political one?

2. Who is responsible for preserving our digital culture?

Exercise: Find three "murdered" platforms from your lifetime. What was lost?

Further Reading:

• Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms

• Parikka, What Is Media Archaeology?

• Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive

Chapter 2: The Archaeobyte Taxonomy

Author: [Theorist/taxonomist]

Contents:

• Why We Need New Terms (Platform death ≠ obsolescence)

• The Archaeobyte: Excavated from living platforms (MySpace, LiveJournal)

• The Vivibyte: Alive on sovereign ground (personal domains, self-hosted)

• The Umbrabyte: Murdered by platform shutdowns (GeoCities, Vine, Google Reader)

• The Petribyte: Petrified in obsolete formats (floppy disks, Flash, Java applets)

• Borderline Cases and Taxonomic Ambiguity

Case Studies:

• Archaeobytes: The MySpace Music Archive (17M songs, partial rescue 2019)

• Vivibiytes: Tim Berners-Lee's First Website (still online at CERN, 1991)

• Umbrabytes: Vine (200M videos, murdered 2017)

• Petribytes: Flash Games (10,000+ games, unplayable after 2020)

Discussion Questions:

1. Can a Vivibyte become an Umbrabyte? (What if your hosting company shuts down?)

2. Are Petribytes "dead" or "dormant"? (Emulation can resurrect them)

Exercise: Classify 20 digital artifacts using the taxonomy

Further Reading:

• Chun, "The Enduring Ephemeral"

• Sterling, "Dead Media Project"

• Zittrain, "Digital Tethering and Content Control"

Chapter 3: The Archive and the Anvil

Author: [Practitioner/archivist]

Contents:

• Dual Soul of the Archaeobytologist

• The Archive: Preservation, curation, memory

• The Anvil: Forging, building, creation

• Why Both Are Necessary (Preservation without creation is hoarding; creation without preservation is ephemeral)

• Historical Precedents (Librarians who were also publishers; archivists who built institutions)

Case Studies:

• Brewster Kahle: Built Internet Archive (Archive) and invented Alexa (Anvil)

• Jason Scott: Archives platforms (Archive Team) and creates documentaries (Anvil)

• Anita Sarkeesian: Archives gaming culture and forges critical frameworks

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you specialize in one (Archive or Anvil), or must you do both?

2. What happens when Archive and Anvil conflict? (Preservation vs. innovation)

Exercise: Design a monument (Anvil) using preserved artifacts (Archive)

Further Reading:

• Derrida, Archive Fever

• Sennett, The Craftsman

• Ratto, "Critical Making"

Chapter 4: The Three Pillars of Digital Sovereignty

Author: [Political theorist/ethicist]

Contents:

• Why "Sovereignty" Not "Ownership" (Sovereignty is inalienable; ownership can be sold)

• Pillar 1: Declaration (I Am) — Sovereign identity, no platform intermediary

• Pillar 2: Connection (Instant Message) — Direct communication, intentional community

• Pillar 3: Ground (Digital Real Estate) — Owned infrastructure, permanent address

• Historical Roots (Greek authentikos, Enlightenment sovereignty, property rights)

• Three Pillars in Practice (Domain + hosting + email = basic sovereignty)

Case Studies:

• GeoCities: Had Ground, lost Connection (isolated homepages)

• Facebook: Has Connection, no Ground (rented land, no export)

• Email: All Three Pillars (if self-hosted: your@yourdomain.com)

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you have sovereignty without technical literacy?

2. Is sovereignty scalable? (Can billions have Ground?)

Exercise: Audit your own digital sovereignty (Do you own your domain? Data? Identity?)

Further Reading:

• Lessig, Code: Version 2.0

• Schneier, Data and Goliath

• Véliz, Privacy Is Power

Chapter 5: Triage Methodology

Author: [Methodologist/practitioner]

Contents:

• Why Triage? (Can't save everything; must prioritize)

• The Custodial Filter (Ethical framework for what to preserve)

• Triage Criteria:

  1. Cultural Significance: Does this represent a community, movement, moment?

  2. Technical Fragility: How close to disappearance?

  3. Rescue Difficulty: How hard to preserve?

  4. Existing Redundancy: Is someone else preserving this?

  5. Consent & Ethics: Should we preserve this? (Privacy, trauma, harm)

• Triage in Practice (Workflow, tools, decision-making)

Case Studies:

• Archive Team's Rapid Response (When Geocities announced shutdown, prioritized most unique sites)

• 9/11 Digital Archive (Community submissions + curatorial selection)

• Software Heritage (Algorithmic triage: preserve all public source code)

Discussion Questions:

1. Who decides what's "culturally significant"? (Curators, communities, algorithms?)

2. When should we NOT preserve something? (Revenge porn, doxxing, hate speech)

Exercise: You have 48 hours before a platform shuts down. Triage 100 artifacts.

Further Reading:

• Manoff, "Theories of the Archive"

• Caswell, "Seeing Yourself in History"

• Zuboff, The Surveillance Capitalism

Chapter 6: Discipline Formation and Boundaries

Author: [Historian of science/STS scholar]

Contents:

• How Disciplines Form (Kuhn's paradigms, boundary work, professionalization)

• Why Archaeobytology Is Not:

  • Digital History (broader; includes non-historical artifacts)

  • Media Archaeology (deeper; focuses on lived practice, not just dead media)

  • Library Science (includes creation, not just cataloging)

  • Computer Science (humanistic, not just technical)

• Interdisciplinary Foundations (History, Library Science, STS, Media Studies, CS)

• The Path to Legitimacy (Journals, conferences, departments, careers)

Case Studies:

• Digital Humanities: 40-year journey from "humanities computing" to departments

• Data Science: Industry-led rapid professionalization (5 years)

• Science & Technology Studies (STS): Coalition building across disciplines

Discussion Questions:

1. Should Archaeobytology be standalone or interdisciplinary?

2. What are the risks of professionalization? (Gatekeeping, credentialism)

Exercise: Draft a mission statement for the first Archaeobytology department

Further Reading:

• Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Small, "Disciplinarity and Its Discontent"

• Klein, Interdisciplining Digital Humanities

PART II: EXCAVATION & FORENSICS (Chapters 7-10)

How do we find, recover, and analyze digital artifacts?

Chapter 7: Archaeological Methods for Digital Artifacts

Author: [Digital archaeologist/technologist]

Contents:

• Adapting Physical Archaeology to Digital Contexts

• Stratigraphic Analysis: Layers of code, version histories, migrations

• Site Surveys: Mapping platform architectures, link networks, user communities

• Excavation Techniques: Web scraping, API harvesting, forensic recovery

• Provenance Research: Who made this? When? Why? For whom?

• Ethical Excavation: Consent, privacy, harm reduction

Case Studies:

• The ONE Terabyte of Kilobyte Age Project (GeoCities excavation)

• Wayback Machine's WARC Format (Web ARChive standard)

• Flash Decompilation (Reverse-engineering SWF files)

Discussion Questions:

1. Is web scraping "theft" or "preservation"?

2. How do you excavate ephemeral content? (Stories, Snapchat, disappearing messages)

Exercise: Excavate a defunct platform using Wayback Machine + archive.org tools

Further Reading:

• Kirschenbaum, "The .txtual Condition"

• Brügger, The Archived Web

• Ankerson, "Writing Web Histories with an Eye on the Analog Past"

Chapter 8: Digital Forensics for Archaeobytologists

Author: [Forensic technologist]

Contents:

• What Is Digital Forensics? (Recovering data, establishing authenticity, chain of custody)

• Forensic Tools:

  • Hex Editors: Reading raw file structures

  • Metadata Extraction: EXIF, file properties, timestamps

  • Emulation: Running old software in sandboxes

  • Reverse Engineering: Decompiling code, format reconstruction

• Authentication Challenges (How do you prove this is "the original"?)

• Legal & Ethical Issues (Copyright, privacy, hacking laws)

Case Studies:

• The Domesday Project (1986 BBC multimedia project became unreadable by 2002; forensically recovered)

• NSA's Tape Recovery (Decades-old tapes required custom hardware to read)

• Flash Preservation (Ruffle emulator project)

Discussion Questions:

1. When does forensic recovery cross into hacking?

2. Can digital artifacts have "authenticity"? (Everything is a copy)

Exercise: Use forensic tools to recover deleted files from a disk image

Further Reading:

• Carrier, File System Forensic Analysis

• Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms

• McDonough et al., "Preserving Virtual Worlds"

Chapter 9: The Custodial Filter—Ethics of Preservation

Author: [Ethicist/archivist]

Contents:

• When Preservation Causes Harm (Revenge porn, doxxing, hate speech, trauma)

• The Custodial Filter Framework:

  1. Consent: Did creators consent to preservation?

  2. Context: Can we preserve context (or will it be misunderstood)?

  3. Harm Reduction: Does preservation harm individuals/communities?

  4. Public Interest: Is there cultural/historical value that outweighs harm?

  5. Right to Be Forgotten: When should things be allowed to disappear?

• Case Studies of Ethical Dilemmas

• Policies for Memory Institutions

Case Studies:

• Gamergate Harassment Archives (Preserve as evidence of harm? Or amplify abuse?)

• Tumblr NSFW Purge (Sex workers' livelihoods deleted; should archives rescue?)

• 9/11 Digital Archive (Preserving trauma with care, consent, embargo)

Discussion Questions:

1. Who decides what should be forgotten?

2. Can you preserve context when the platform is dead?

Exercise: Apply Custodial Filter to 10 controversial artifacts. Preserve or delete?

Further Reading:

• Caswell, "Urgent Archives"

• Noble, Algorithms of Oppression

• Dunbar-Hester, "Listening to Cybernetics"

Chapter 10: Triage Workflow—From Discovery to Preservation

Author: [Archivist/project manager]

Contents:

• The Complete Triage Pipeline:

  1. Discovery: Monitoring platforms for shutdown announcements

  2. Assessment: Applying triage criteria (significance, fragility, etc.)

  3. Mobilization: Recruiting volunteers, allocating resources

  4. Capture: Web scraping, API harvesting, community submissions

  5. Validation: Checking data integrity, metadata completeness

  6. Storage: Redundant backups, distributed preservation

  7. Access: Making artifacts retrievable (catalog, search, browse)

  8. Interpretation: Curating, contextualizing, exhibiting

• Tools & Automation (Archive Team scripts, Webrecorder, Conifer)

• Rapid Response Protocols (48-hour shutdown scenarios)

Case Studies:

• Archive Team's Vine Rescue (200M videos saved in weeks)

• Google+ Shutdown (Users had months' notice; community coordination)

• Flash's Death (Years of warning; community built Ruffle emulator)

Discussion Questions:

1. Can triage be fully automated? (Or does it require human judgment?)

2. What happens when you rescue something no one wants? (Hoarding vs. preservation)

Exercise: Design a rapid response plan for TikTok shutdown (hypothetical)

Further Reading:

• Archive Team documentation

• Phillips & Milner, You Are Here: A Field Guide to the Internet

• Brügger & Schroeder, The Web as History

PART III: INSTITUTION BUILDING (Chapters 11-14)

How do we build organizations that outlast us?

Chapter 11: Sustainable Preservation Organizations (The Archive)

Author: [Non-profit director/archivist]

Contents:

• Why Individual Heroism Fails (Burnout, death, loss of interest)

• Institutional Design:

  • Governance Models: Non-profit, co-op, university-hosted, government

  • Revenue Models: Donations, memberships, grants, earned revenue

  • Technical Architecture: Centralized, federated, P2P, hybrid

  • Succession Planning: What happens when founder leaves?

• Case Study Deep-Dives (Internet Archive, LOCKSS, Software Heritage)

• 10-Year Sustainability Planning

Case Studies:

• Internet Archive: $40M budget, 70 employees, 25+ years, but single point of failure (San Francisco)

• LOCKSS: 300 libraries, distributed redundancy, 20+ years

• Perma.cc: University consortium, federated, member-funded

Discussion Questions:

1. Should preservation organizations be centralized (efficient) or distributed (resilient)?

2. How do you fund preservation work that never generates revenue?

Exercise: Design a preservation organization with 10-year budget and governance

Further Reading:

• Kahle, "Preserving the Internet"

• Ostrom, Governing the Commons

• Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

Chapter 12: The Economics of Sovereignty (The Anvil)

Author: [Entrepreneur/business scholar]

Contents:

• Can You Monetize Sovereignty? (Selling domains, hosting, tools without becoming a landlord)

• Business Models That Work:

  • Open Core: Free software + paid managed services (Ghost, WordPress.com)

  • Tooling Sales: Sell sovereignty-enabling products (themes, plugins, frameworks)

  • Consulting: Help organizations build their own sovereignty

  • Cooperatives: Member-owned businesses (Stocksy, Resonate)

• Business Models to Avoid:

  • VC-funded startups (exit pressure → enshittification)

  • Surveillance advertising (violates Three Pillars)

  • Speculative models (blockchain domain squatting)

• Case Study Comparisons

Case Studies:

• Ghost: Non-profit owns for-profit subsidiary, sustainable open source

• Basecamp: Bootstrapped, calm company, but still a platform (customers don't own Ground)

• ENS (.eth domains): Censorship-resistant, but speculative and exclusionary

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you be profitable AND principled?

2. Is "open core" exploitative? (Free users subsidize paying customers)

Exercise: Design a "foundry" business selling sovereignty tools

Further Reading:

• Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

• Doctorow, The Internet Con

• Scholz, Platform Cooperativism

Chapter 13: Distributed Commons Governance (The Seed Bank)

Author: [Commons scholar/Ostrom expert]

Contents:

• Why Commons? (What individuals can't do alone, markets won't fund, states won't prioritize)

• Elinor Ostrom's 8 Design Principles Applied to Digital Preservation:

  1. Clear boundaries

  2. Proportional equivalence (costs/benefits)

  3. Collective choice

  4. Monitoring

  5. Graduated sanctions

  6. Conflict resolution

  7. Recognition of rights

  8. Nested enterprises

• Case Study Comparisons (LOCKSS vs. Mastodon vs. IPFS)

• Designing a Seed Bank (Distributed preservation commons)

Case Studies:

• LOCKSS: Gold standard (applies all 8 principles)

• Mastodon: Federation works, but governance failures (admin burnout, fragmentation)

• IPFS: P2P storage, but no governance (files disappear if no one pins them)

Discussion Questions:

1. Can digital commons scale to millions of users?

2. How do you balance openness (anyone can join) with accountability (no bad actors)?

Exercise: Design a federated preservation network using Ostrom's principles

Further Reading:

• Ostrom, Governing the Commons

• Benkler, "The Political Economy of Commons"

• Schneier, Liars and Outliers

Chapter 14: Memory Institutions for the Digital Age (The Haunted Forest)

Author: [Museum curator/memory studies scholar]

Contents:

• What Is a Memory Institution? (Museum, archive, library, memorial)

• Challenges of Digital Curation:

  • Decontextualization: Platform death erases context

  • Illegibility: Requires dead software to read

  • Scale: Millions of artifacts, limited curation capacity

  • Ephemerality: Digital objects decay, migrate, mutate

• Curatorial Strategies:

  • Comprehensive: Preserve everything (Internet Archive model)

  • Curated: Select representative artifacts (museum model)

  • Community-Driven: User submissions (9/11 Digital Archive model)

• Technical Preservation (Screenshots → static → emulation → live preservation)

Case Studies:

• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: Comprehensive, but no curation

• The Strong Museum: Curated video game exhibits, playable

• GeoCities Archive: Data dump, no interpretation

Discussion Questions:

1. Is the Wayback Machine a museum or a warehouse?

2. Who decides what's "culturally significant"?

Exercise: Design a museum exhibit for a murdered platform (Vine, Google Reader, etc.)

Further Reading:

• Drucker, "Is There a 'Digital' Art History?"

• Manoff, "Theories of the Archive"

• Chun, "The Enduring Ephemeral"

PART IV: SYSTEMS & MOVEMENTS (Chapters 15-16)

How do we change the world?

Chapter 15: The Political Economy of Digital Ground

Author: [Political economist/tech policy scholar]

Contents:

• Who Controls Digital Infrastructure?

  • Domains: ICANN, registrars (can seize, censor, rent-seek)

  • Hosting: AWS, Cloudflare (can deplatform, surveil)

  • Identity: Google, Facebook (control who you are)

  • Payment: Visa, PayPal (can freeze accounts)

• Why Existing Alternatives Fail (ENS too speculative, Mastodon too complex, Tor too stigmatized)

• Designing Sovereign Alternatives (Case studies + frameworks)

• The Sovereignty Stack (Physical → Network → Identity → Storage → Application → Economic)

Case Studies:

• DNS/ICANN: Centralized, subject to seizure, rent-seeking

• ENS (.eth): Decentralized, but speculative and exclusionary

• Mastodon: Federated, but admin power and fragmentation

• Tor: Anonymous, but slow and stigmatized

Discussion Questions:

1. Is DNS reformable, or must it be replaced?

2. Can blockchain sovereignty avoid plutocracy?

Exercise: Redesign one layer of the sovereignty stack (domain, hosting, identity, etc.)

Further Reading:

• Lessig, Code: Version 2.0

• Schneier, Data and Goliath

• Doctorow, The Internet Con

Chapter 16: From Practice to Discipline—Movement Building

Author: [STS scholar/discipline historian]

Contents:

• How Disciplines Form (Boundaries, methods, institutions, professionalization)

• Building Knowledge Infrastructure:

  • Journals, conferences, textbooks, handbooks

• Institutional Anchors:

  • Departments, programs, centers, labs

• Professional Pathways:

  • Academic, curator, consultant, industry, non-profit, government

• Public Visibility:

  • Books, podcasts, documentaries, op-eds, TED talks

• Policy Advocacy:

  • Right to Archive Act, Platform Accountability, Digital Heritage Protection

• Timeline: 10-20 year roadmap to legitimacy

Case Studies:

• Digital Humanities: 40-year slow burn

• Data Science: Industry-led rapid professionalization (5 years)

• STS: Coalition building across disciplines

Discussion Questions:

1. Should Archaeobytology be standalone or interdisciplinary?

2. Can we accelerate discipline formation? (What's the catalyst?)

Exercise: Design a 10-year movement strategy (conferences, journals, departments, advocacy)

Further Reading:

• Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Small, "Disciplinarity and Its Discontent"

• Klein, Interdisciplining Digital Humanities

PART V: PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP & THE FUTURE (Chapters 17-18)

Chapter 17: The Public Intellectual in Archaeobytology

Author: [Public intellectual/journalist scholar]

Contents:

• Why Public Scholarship Matters (Academic work stays in journals; public work shapes culture)

• Translating Research for Audiences:

  • Academic: Journal articles (8,000 words, jargon, citations)

  • Practitioners: Trade publications (2,000 words, actionable)

  • Policymakers: Policy briefs (1,500 words, recommendations)

  • Public: Op-eds (800 words, urgent, accessible)

  • Social media: Threads (500 words, shareable)

• Building Platforms (Blog, newsletter, podcast, speaking circuit)

• Media Engagement (Working with journalists, pitching op-eds)

• Policy Influence (Testimony, whitepapers, model legislation)

Case Studies:

• Cory Doctorow: Daily blog (Pluralistic), policy influence

• Safiya Noble: Academic research → public book → Congressional testimony

• Brewster Kahle: Built Internet Archive → evangelist for preservation

• Zeynep Tufekci: Sociologist → New York Times columnist

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you be a rigorous scholar AND a public intellectual?

2. How do you balance tenure expectations with public impact?

Exercise: Write three versions of the same idea (academic article, op-ed, tweet thread)

Further Reading:

• Posner, Public Intellectuals

• Burawoy, "For Public Sociology"

• McKenzie, "How Academics Can Better Engage Media"

Chapter 18: Forging the Third Way—Vision for a Post-Platform Future

Author: [Lead editor + multiple contributors]

Contents:

• What Is a "Third Way"? (Rejects platform capitalism AND tech solutionism)

• Principles of Third Way Systems:

  • Sovereignty without speculation

  • Connection without surveillance

  • Infrastructure without extraction

• Case Studies of Emerging Alternatives:

  • Platform cooperatives (Stocksy, Resonate)

  • Federated networks (Mastodon, Matrix, PeerTube)

  • Commons infrastructure (LOCKSS, Software Heritage)

  • Open protocols (ActivityPub, IPFS, Solid)

• Integrated Design Framework (Technical + Governance + Economic + Movement)

• The Next 50 Years: What We Must Build

Vision Statements from Multiple Contributors:

• What would a sovereign social network look like?

• What would a national digital archive system look like?

• What would a movement for digital sovereignty look like?

Capstone Exercise: Design a complete Third Way system (platform alternative, institutional infrastructure, or movement+policy package)

Closing Essay: "The Archaeobytologist's Manifesto"

• Own your Ground. Tell your story. Forge your future.

• We are scholars and smiths, custodians and strategists.

• We preserve what platforms murder. We build what outlasts us.

• This is Archaeobytology.

Further Reading:

• Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

• Doctorow, The Internet Con

• Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

• Schneier, Data and Goliath

• The entire bibliography from this course

APPENDICES

Appendix A: Glossary of Terms

• Archaeobyte, Vivibyte, Umbrabyte, Petribyte

• Archive, Anvil, Triage, Custodial Filter

• Three Pillars: Declaration, Connection, Ground

• Seed Bank, Haunted Forest, Foundry

• Platform Landlord, Digital Sovereignty, Institutional Void

Appendix B: Essential Tools & Resources

• Web archiving: Wayback Machine, Archive-It, Webrecorder, Conifer

• Emulation: Ruffle (Flash), DOSBox, RetroArch

• Forensics: Hex editors, metadata extractors, disk imaging

• Community: Archive Team, Internet Archive, EFF

Appendix C: Sample Syllabi

• 101-level: Introduction to Archaeobytology (undergraduate survey)

• 200-level: Methods in Digital Preservation (hands-on technical)

• 300-level: Institution Building (graduate seminar)

Appendix D: Teaching Resources

• Discussion prompts

• Assignment templates

• Grading rubrics

• Case study datasets

Appendix E: Professional Resources

• Career pathways (academic, curatorial, consulting, industry)

• Job boards and listings

• Professional societies

• Conferences and journals

Comprehensive Bibliography (200+ sources)

Foundational Theory

• Derrida, Archive Fever

• Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

• Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Media Archaeology

• Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive

• Parikka, What Is Media Archaeology?

• Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media

• Huhtamo & Parikka, Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, Implications

Digital Preservation

• Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms

• Chun, "The Enduring Ephemeral"

• Brügger, The Archived Web

• Kahle, "Preserving the Internet"

Platform Studies & Critique

• Zuboff, The Surveillance Capitalism

• Noble, Algorithms of Oppression

• Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet

• Doctorow, The Internet Con

Commons & Governance

• Ostrom, Governing the Commons

• Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

• Bollier, Think Like a Commoner

• Schneier, Liars and Outliers

Tech Policy & Ethics

• Lessig, Code: Version 2.0

• Schneier, Data and Goliath

• Véliz, Privacy Is Power

• Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

Craft & Making

• Sennett, The Craftsman

• Ratto, "Critical Making"

• Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship

Public Scholarship

• Posner, Public Intellectuals

• Burawoy, "For Public Sociology"

Discipline Formation

• Small, "Disciplinarity and Its Discontent"

• Klein, Interdisciplining Digital Humanities

About the Editors

[To be filled with actual contributors when book is commissioned]

Index

[Comprehensive index of terms, concepts, people, platforms, organizations]

End of Textbook Outline

Publication Strategy

Open Access Model (Recommended)

• Publisher: MIT Press Open, punctum books, or self-published with ISBN

• Format: Free PDF + print-on-demand (~$40 paperback, $80 hardcover)

• Companion Website: archaeobytology.org

  • Datasets for exercises

  • Video tutorials

  • Community forum

  • Teaching resources

Why Open Access?

• Embodies Three Pillars (accessible Ground, not paywalled)

• Maximizes adoption (professors can assign without cost barrier)

• Builds discipline faster (more readers = more practitioners)

• Can still generate revenue (print sales, institutional sales, consulting)

Companion Course Materials

• Instructor's Guide (200 pages: lecture notes, answer keys, grading rubrics)

• Student Workbook (100 pages: exercises, templates, checklists)

• Case Study Database (Searchable repository of 100+ platform deaths with teaching notes)

• Video Lectures (YouTube series: 18 chapters × 20 min = 6 hours)

Marketing & Adoption Strategy

Target Audiences:

1. Universities: History, Library Science, Media Studies, CS, STS programs

2. Practitioners: Archivists, curators, preservation specialists

3. Industry: Tech companies needing institutional memory

4. General Public: Trade press reviews, public library acquisition

Launch Strategy:

• Announce at major conferences (ADHO, SAA, 4S)

• Op-eds in Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed

• Social media campaign (Twitter threads on each chapter)

• Free chapter downloads (Chapter 1 + one technical chapter)

• Author talks at 20 universities (book tour)

Adoption Metrics (5-year goals):

• 50 universities adopt (syllabi on record)

• 5,000 copies circulated (print + PDF downloads)

• 10 derivative courses developed (200-level, 400-level variations)

• First Archaeobytology departments launched (using textbook as foundation)

This textbook would be ~600-700 pages and serve as the definitive introduction to the field, used for decades as Archaeobytology becomes a recognized discipline.