[Themaintainers] Decommissioning Online Infrastructures

[Joshua Braun]

Hi Maintainers,

I'm looking for literature suggestions. I'm currently starting work on a research project looking at Twitter's dismantling of the Vine video service. In line with the observation made in excellent essays like Steven Jackson's "Rethinking Repair" [1] and Marisa Cohn's "Engineering Obsolesence" [2], there seems to be a lot of research in both media studies and STS on how new technologies, products, and services get created, but not nearly so much on how older ones get dismantled and decommissioned.

Some of your own work, which I've been catching up on via the Maintainers website, has already been very helpful. So please plug it. And I would welcome your recommendations of additional literature that touches on these areas. I'm interested in the topic broadly, but papers on the decommissioning of software and digital infrastructures would be particularly helpful.

Many Thanks,
Josh

P.S. I sent a similar version of this note to the AIR-L list. Apologies if you receive this as a cross-post.

[1] https://sjackson.infosci.cornell.edu/RethinkingRepairPROOFS(reduced)Aug2013.pdf
[2] http://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2014/04/21/engineering_obsolescence/

-- 
Josh Braun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Journalism Studies
Journalism Department
University of Massachusetts Amherst

@josh_braun
Skype: wideaperture
http://wideaperture.net/
new book: http://wideaperture.net/?view=book

"Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain.  An inheritance of wonder and nothing more."
William Least Heat-Moon

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