Supplementary / Case Studies

Case Studies

Deep forensic examinations of digital platforms and extinction events.

Each case study applies archaeobytological methodology to extract lessons from digital history, demonstrating how ephemeral bytes leave permanent scars on the cultural record.

Autopsy

Platform Autopsies

Anvil's Edge • Dec 2025

Who Guards the Library?

Case study examining how Wikipedia and Wikidata's "notability" standards systematically exclude independent researchers, effectively silencing non-institutional knowledge.

Read Case Study →
Critical Essay • Jan 2026

No, Google, Archaeobytology Is Not A Typo

A polemic on algorithmic gatekeeping. How search monopolies delegitimize new disciplines by auto-correcting them back to established norms (Archaeology) before they can emerge.

Read Polemic →

Forthcoming Autopsies

  • GeoCities (2009): The Great Homestead Extinction and the loss of vernacular web culture.
  • Google Reader (2013): Strategic Platform Murder and the centralization of news feeds.
  • Vine (2017): When Corporate Parents Kill—the death of the six-second loop.
  • MySpace (2019): The 50 Million Song Massacre and the fragility of cloud storage.
  • Tumblr (2018): Death by Policy Change and the exodus of subcultures.
Forensics

Format Forensics

Coming Soon

MP3 Survival

Why open standards persist while proprietary formats rot.

Flash's Fossilization

The death of the interactive web and the emulation era.

HTML's Resilience

The power of simplicity in long-term preservation.

RealMedia's Extinction

DRM as a murder weapon for digital content.

Living Systems

Contemporary Platform Analysis

Coming Soon

Mastodon & ActivityPub

Federation as a sovereignty strategy.

Bluesky & AT Protocol

Portable identity architecture and data lakes.

Solid Project

Radical data-application separation.

Nostr

Minimalist protocol design and censorship resistance.