[Air-L] Decommissioning Online Infrastructures

[Joshua Braun]

Hi All,

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,
decommissioned, or enter into maintainership.

I would welcome your recommendations of 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. Nathan Ensmenger's "When Good Software Goes Bad: The Unexpected
Durability of Digital Technologies" [3] is another paper I'd recommend
to other folks interested in this topic.

[1]
https://sjackson.infosci.cornell.edu/RethinkingRepairPROOFS(reduced)Aug2013.pdf
[2] http://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2014/04/21/engineering_obsolescence/
[3] http://themaintainers.org/s/ensmenger-maintainers-v2.pdf

-- 
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