Abandoned Websites and Entropy on the Internet

互联网正在崩溃。2013年，Jason Hennessey和Steven Sinjin GE的一项研究发现，只有62%的URL仍然可用，URL的平均寿命为9.3年。当代关于互联网熵的讨论通常集中在保存上，例如互联网档案馆的WayBackMachine和永久链接。然而，事实证明，即使是档案也是不稳定的：技术和法律挑战破坏了此类备份本应具有的安全性和持久性。我的论文旨在成为一部具有开创性的互联网熵文化史，即互联网失败的条件。这次故障不是一个单一事件，而是一系列死网站、断链接和坏数据的集合。我的研究超越了有意识的保存，考察了什么样的互联网在没有人照看的情况下仍然存在。我的研究问题是：-我们如何理解互联网熵的持续过程，不是作为工程师，而是作为万维网的社会居民，以及这种熵的艺术品？-互联网熵如何影响我们对线上和线下世界的体验？这种破坏产生了什么样的社会集结、心理过程和艺术品？-我们应该如何应对互联网上的信息量，超越有缺陷的档案直觉？我们可能会被迫做出什么选择？为了回答这些问题，我的论文分五章考虑了五个方面：1)“废弃的网站”，它们仍然保持着不同程度的在线完整性。其中包括鲍勃·多尔1996年的总统竞选活动、太空堵塞电影和天门UFO邪教。2)对社交媒体的个人资料进行“纪念”。3)网络游戏中的遗弃行为。这包括仍然在线的虚拟世界，如Active Worlds；由于合并和关闭而迫使玩家移动服务器的“服务器迁移”；以及“我的世界”中的数据挖掘，以找回“丢失的”结构和标志。4)恶意软件和病毒。5)互联网起源于“真实”世界并与之互动的物理手段--服务器机房、硬件、物联网。我的论文综合和剖析了既定的方法论，利用了文化史、美学、人类学和技术的框架。它结合了包括Parikka在内的媒体考古学家的历史和理论分析，以及对Legacy Russell等作家对Gitch的解放使用。一个重要的组成部分将是仔细阅读文化文物及其退化情况，这些文物位于(或反对)文化和技术历史中。Wendy Huu Kyong Chun是这一策略的关键参考：例如，她利用约翰·冯·诺伊曼关于存储内存计算机体系结构的工作的历史记录和近距离阅读歌德的《浮士德》，揭示了我的论文发起的档案冲动--软件是如何硬化成据称保证遗传和持久性的东西的。通过这些方法论，我的目标是分析互联网的熵，认为它内在地存在于离散的文化艺术品中，本身是一个历史偶然的过程，正在发生和尚未发生。最重要的是，我解决了“网站作为手稿”这一隐喻的持续主导地位，即保存每一次迭代的理想。相反，我的论文建议回到“网络空间”，作为一种框架隐喻：网站就是环境。《网络空间》突出了互联网的社会和物质结构之间的复杂互动，以及被遗弃和毁灭的脆弱性。最初，这个比喻是在早期互联网使用的浪漫化的“狂野西部”中发展起来的--但Facebook最近宣布推出“Metverse”，这是一个为工作和娱乐而设计的虚拟现实，表明网络空间已经回归大众意识，受到隐私侵犯和政府干预的当代危险的影响。我使用网络空间来颠覆这些占主导地位的非历史-商业视角，以更微妙的视角看待围绕互联网熵的历史和社会力量。

The internet is collapsing. A 2013 study by Jason Hennessey and Steven Xijin Ge found only 62% of URLs were still available, and a URL's median lifetime was 9.3 years. Contemporary discussion of internet entropy has generally focused on preservation, for example the Internet Archive's WayBackMachine, and permalinks. Even archives prove unstable, however: technological and legal challenges undermine the supposed safety and permanence of such backups.My thesis aims to be a pioneering cultural history of 'internet entropy', the condition by which the internet fails. This failure isn't a single event but an assemblage of dead websites, broken links, and bad data. My research looks beyond conscious preservation to examine what sort of internet survives when no one looks after it.My research questions are:- How do we understand ongoing processes of internet entropy, not as engineers but as social inhabitants of the World Wide Web, and artefacts of this entropy?- How has internet entropy influenced our experience of online and offline worlds? What social assemblages, psychological processes and artworks have arisen from this ruination?- How should we deal with internet entropy beyond the flawed archival instinct? What choices might we be forced to make?To answer these, my thesis considers five areas in separate chapters:1) 'Abandoned websites' which remain online in varying levels of intactness. These include those for the Bob Dole 1996 Presidential Campaign, the Space Jam film, and the Heaven's Gate UFO cult. 2) 'Memorialised' social media profiles. 3) Abandonment in online games . This includes virtual worlds which remain online, such as Active Worlds; 'server migration', where players are forced to move servers because of merges and closures; and data mining in Minecraft to retrieve 'lost' structures and signage.4) Malware and viruses. 5) The physical means by which the internet originates in and interacts with the 'real' world - server rooms, hardware, the internet of things. My thesis synthesises and dissects established methodologies, utilising frameworks from cultural history, aesthetics, anthropology and technology. It combines the historical and theoretical analysis of media archaeologists including Parikka with the emancipatory use of glitch in writers such as Legacy Russell. A vital component will be close readings of cultural artefacts and their degradations, situated in (and against) cultural and technological history. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is a key reference for this strategy: for instance, she uses historical accounts of John von Neumann's work on stored-memory computer architecture and close readings of Goethe's Faust to uncover how 'software hardened into something that allegedly guarantees heredity, and permanence', the archival impulse from which my thesis launches. With these methodologies, I aim to analyse internet entropy as inhering in discrete cultural artefacts and as a historically-contingent process in its own right, happening and yet to happen.Above all, I address the ongoing dominance of the metaphor of 'website as manuscript', the ideal of preserving every iteration. My thesis proposes instead a return to 'cyberspace' as a framing metaphor: website as environment. 'Cyberspace' highlights complex interactions between social and material constructions of the internet and vulnerability to abandonment and ruin. Originally, this metaphor was developed in the romanticised 'Wild West' of early internet use - but Facebook's recent announcement of the 'Metaverse', a virtual reality designed for work and recreation, demonstrates how cyberspace is already returning to popular consciousness, inflected with contemporary dangers of privacy breaching and government interference. I use cyberspace to subvert these dominant ahistorical-commercial perspectives with a more nuanced view of historical and social forces surrounding internet entropy.