Index
Core Concepts
Archaeobyte - Digital artifact that was once alive, died through platform shutdown or obsolescence, and has been preserved in some form
Archaeobytology - The study and practice of excavating, preserving, interpreting, and building with digital artifacts, particularly those murdered by platforms
Anvil, The - The creative/building practice of Archaeobytology; forging tools, protocols, and institutions that embody digital sovereignty
Archive, The - The preservation/memory practice of Archaeobytology; excavating and maintaining murdered digital artifacts
Bit Rot - Gradual degradation of digital storage media leading to data loss
Chain of Custody - Documentation of who handled an artifact and when, essential for forensic integrity
Context Collapse - When content created for specific audience becomes accessible to unintended audiences (e.g., private forum posts made public in archive)
Custodial Filter, The - Five-question ethical framework for triage decisions (significance, fragility, feasibility, redundancy, ethics)
Digital Ground - Infrastructure and storage a user controls; Third Pillar of sovereignty
Digital Sovereignty - Ability to exist, communicate, and build in digital space without corporate gatekeeping; embodied in Three Pillars
Dual Soul - Archaeobytology's integrated practice of preservation (Archive) and creation (Anvil)
Emulation - Running old software/platforms on modern systems by simulating original hardware/OS
Format Migration - Converting files from obsolete formats to current standards
Link Rot - URLs breaking over time as sites move, reorganize, or disappear
Murdered Platform - Platform deliberately killed by corporate decision, not natural obsolescence
Petribyte - Digital artifact so old and well-preserved it's achieved monument status (like stone tablets)
Platform Death - Shutdown of digital platform resulting in loss of hosted content and communities
POSSE - "Post On your Site, Syndicate Elsewhere" - IndieWeb practice of owning original content
Provenance - Documentation of artifact's origin, creation, and history
Shadow Preservation - Archiving content without explicit permission, often in legal gray areas
Stratigraphic Analysis - Studying layers of digital artifacts to understand temporal and contextual relationships
Surveillance Capitalism - Business model extracting behavioral data for profit (Zuboff)
Triage - Systematic methodology for deciding what to preserve when resources are scarce
Umbrabyte - Digital artifact that's technically dead but exists in fragmentary form; haunting but not fully preserved
Vivibyte - Digital artifact currently alive but endangered by platform instability
Web Scraping - Automated extraction of website content for preservation
Three Pillars of Digital Sovereignty
Pillar 1: Declaration (I Am) - Self-owned identity and persistent presence without platform permission
Pillar 2: Connection (Instant Message) - Direct communication and portable relationships without corporate intermediation
Pillar 3: Ground (Digital Real Estate) - Owned infrastructure, data, and domains; ability to migrate without loss
Four Institutions
The Archive - Preservation organization; saves murdered platforms and maintains artifacts for decades
The Anvil - Profitable business building sovereign tools/platforms while embodying Three Pillars
The Seed Bank - Distributed commons governance structure; peer-to-peer preservation without single point of failure
The Haunted Forest - Memory institution (museum/memorial); curates and interprets preserved artifacts for public
Key Organizations
Archive Team - Guerrilla digital archiving collective that mobilizes to rescue dying platforms
Creative Commons - Organization providing open licensing frameworks for content sharing
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - Digital rights advocacy organization
Internet Archive - Non-profit digital library providing free access to websites, books, media, and software
Library of Congress - U.S. national library with extensive digital preservation programs
Mozilla Foundation - Non-profit supporting open web technologies and user sovereignty
Wikimedia Foundation - Operates Wikipedia and sister projects; model of commons governance
Technologies and Protocols
ActivityPub - W3C standard for federated social networking (used by Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube)
Archive-It - Web archiving service provided by Internet Archive
ArchiveBox - Open-source self-hosted web archiving tool
BitTorrent - Peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributed preservation
DNS (Domain Name System) - Internet addressing system (centralized, vulnerable to control)
Emularity - JavaScript emulator framework allowing old software to run in web browsers
ENS (Ethereum Name Service) - Blockchain-based naming system for decentralized identity
Flashpoint - Preservation project saving Flash games and animations
Ghost - Open-source publishing platform supporting custom domains and data export
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) - Peer-to-peer distributed file system for permanent web storage
Matrix - Open protocol for federated, end-to-end encrypted communication
Mastodon - Federated social network using ActivityPub protocol
Nextcloud - Open-source self-hosted productivity platform (alternative to Google Workspace)
Obsidian - Knowledge management app storing files locally in Markdown (data sovereignty)
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) - Open protocol for content syndication and subscriptions
Signal - End-to-end encrypted messaging app using Signal Protocol
WARC (Web ARChive format) - ISO standard file format for web archiving
Wayback Machine - Internet Archive's web page archiving service (800+ billion pages)
WebRecorder - Tool for high-fidelity web archiving including dynamic content
WordPress - Open-source content management system powering 40%+ of web
wget - Command-line tool for downloading websites
Platforms (Murdered or Endangered)
AOL (America Online) - Early internet service provider; email service declined/abandoned
Blogger - Google-owned blogging platform; free but corporate-controlled
Discord - Proprietary chat platform; communities at risk if platform shuts down
Ello - Anti-advertising social network; failed to achieve sustainability
Facebook/Meta - Social media monopoly; extractive business model, surveillance capitalism
Flickr - Photo sharing platform; multiple ownership changes threatened survival
FriendFeed - Social aggregation platform; acquired and killed by Facebook (2009)
GeoCities - Early web hosting service; murdered by Yahoo in 2009 (30 million sites lost)
Google+ - Google's social network; shut down 2019
Google Reader - RSS feed reader; killed by Google 2013 despite millions of users
Instagram - Photo sharing owned by Meta; algorithmic feed, no data portability
LiveJournal - Blogging/social platform; Russian ownership drove user exodus
Medium - Publishing platform; multiple business model pivots, corporate control
Mixer - Game streaming platform; Microsoft shut down 2020
MySpace - Early social network; lost 12 years of music in 2019 server migration
Snapchat - Ephemeral messaging app; content designed to disappear
Substack - Newsletter platform; writers don't own domains or full subscriber relationships
TikTok - Video sharing platform; facing potential bans, Chinese ownership controversy
Tumblr - Blogging platform; 2018 NSFW purge deleted millions of posts
Twitter/X - Microblogging platform; chaotic ownership under Musk, mass exodus
Vine - 6-second video platform; Twitter shut down 2017 (200 million videos at risk)
WhatsApp - Encrypted messaging owned by Meta; metadata surveillance, closed platform
Key Thinkers and Practitioners
Benkler, Yochai - Scholar of peer production and commons-based alternatives
Bowker, Geoffrey C. - Information studies scholar; classification and infrastructure
Brewster Kahle - Founder of Internet Archive; digital preservation advocate
Caswell, Michelle - Archival studies scholar; community archives and social justice
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong - Media studies scholar; digital memory and ephemerality
Doctorow, Cory - Science fiction author and digital rights activist; adversarial interoperability
Eugen Rochko - Creator of Mastodon federated social network
Gillespie, Tarleton - Media scholar studying platforms and content moderation
Kirschenbaum, Matthew - Digital humanities scholar; forensic approaches to digital artifacts
Lessig, Lawrence - Legal scholar; "code is law," Creative Commons founder
Nissenbaum, Helen - Privacy scholar; contextual integrity framework
Noble, Safiya Umoja - Scholar of algorithmic bias and racism in technology
Ostrom, Elinor - Nobel laureate; commons governance frameworks
Parikka, Jussi - Media archaeology scholar; dead media studies
Schneier, Bruce - Security expert and cryptographer; surveillance and privacy
Star, Susan Leigh - Sociologist of science and infrastructure
Zuboff, Shoshana - Scholar of surveillance capitalism
Legal and Policy Concepts
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) - U.S. law criminalizing circumvention of DRM; complicates preservation
Fair Use - Legal doctrine allowing limited use of copyrighted material without permission
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) - EU privacy law requiring data portability and deletion rights
Interoperability - Ability of different systems to communicate; essential for sovereignty
Platform Liability - Legal responsibility of platforms for user-generated content
Right to Archive - Proposed legal right to preserve digital content for historical purposes
Right to Be Forgotten - Legal right to request deletion of personal data (conflicts with preservation)
Right to Repair - Legal right to fix devices without manufacturer permission; relevant to digital sovereignty
Section 230 - U.S. law protecting platforms from liability for user content
Terms of Service (ToS) - Legal agreement users accept when joining platform; often restricts data ownership
Methodological Terms
API Harvesting - Using platform APIs to bulk-download data for preservation
Chain-of-Custody Documentation - Recording who handled artifact and when; forensic integrity
Checksum/Hash - Mathematical signature verifying file hasn't been altered
Crawler - Automated program systematically browsing and indexing web content
Defederation - Severing connections between federated instances due to moderation conflicts
Digital Forensics - Investigating digital artifacts to determine authenticity, provenance, and history
Metadata - Data about data (creation date, author, file type, etc.)
Robots.txt - File telling web crawlers which parts of site not to archive
Screen Scraping - Extracting visible content from websites (distinct from API access)
Site Mirroring - Creating complete local copy of website
Stratigraphic Excavation - Methodical layer-by-layer preservation documenting relationships between artifacts
Economic and Governance Models
Cooperative (Co-op) - Business owned and controlled democratically by members/workers
Freemium - Free basic service with paid premium features
Open Core - Open-source base product with proprietary enterprise features
Platform Cooperative - Platform owned by users/workers rather than investors
Public Funding - Government grants, contracts, or direct funding for preservation
Subscription Model - Recurring payments for ongoing service/access
Venture Capital (VC) - Investment funding requiring exponential growth and exit (problematic for sovereignty)
Cultural and Community Terms
Digital Humanities - Interdisciplinary field applying computational methods to humanities research
Fandom - Fan communities creating derivative works and cultural artifacts
IndieWeb - Movement promoting personal websites and data ownership
Media Archaeology - Field studying dead, obsolete, and imaginary media
Platform Studies - Examining how platform architectures shape culture and behavior
Science and Technology Studies (STS) - Interdisciplinary field studying science/tech and society
Slash Fiction - Fan fiction featuring romantic/sexual relationships; often LGBTQ+
Web 1.0 - Early web era (1990s-2000s) characterized by static pages and personal sites
Web 2.0 - Social web era (2000s-2010s) dominated by user-generated content on platforms
Web 3.0 - Contested term; blockchain advocates claim decentralized future; critics see financialization
Timeline of Platform Deaths
1996 - ARPANET decommissioned (replaced by modern Internet)
2001 - Napster shut down by court order
2009 - GeoCities shut down by Yahoo (October 26)
2013 - Google Reader shut down (July 1)
2017 - Vine shut down by Twitter (January 17)
2018 - Tumblr NSFW purge (December 17)
2019 - Google+ shut down (April 2)
2019 - MySpace loses 12 years of music in server migration
2020 - Mixer shut down by Microsoft (July 22)
2022 - Twitter chaos begins under Musk ownership (October 27)
Core Questions
"What should be preserved?" - Central triage question requiring ethical deliberation
"Who owns your identity?" - Question revealing platform control vs. user sovereignty
"Can you take your data with you?" - Test of true data ownership and portability
"What happens when the platform dies?" - Question exposing infrastructure vulnerability
"Who decides what the future can know about the past?" - Question of archival power and responsibility
Appendices Note
For detailed tool instructions, see Appendix B: Tools & Resources For sample curricula, see Appendix C: Sample Syllabi For teaching materials, see Appendix D: Teaching Resources For career pathways, see Appendix E: Professional Resources For citations, see Bibliography
End of Index
This index provides quick reference to key concepts, organizations, technologies, and terms throughout the textbook. For definitions and context, consult the Glossary (Appendix A) or the chapters where terms first appear.