Nedskrivning av Webben : en mediearkeologisk analys av Heritrix

Sammanfattning: There is no doubt that the the Web constitutes an important channel and platform for public discourse and cultural exchange, and that our times will be remembered by accessing the archives of the Web. This is also to say, that perception of the web – present and past – is shaped and governed by the media we and our machines perceive it with. So with what media do we archive it? Recording media is a largely unexplored factor in the preservation of the web and archival science in general, and the question requires rethinking. This Master's thesis examines a prominent instrument used for archiving the web – the software Heritrix – as a technical recording medium. As a contrast and background to Heritrix, the electronic legal deposit law recently enacted in Sweden is written as another medium used to transmit content published online. My research question is, how does Heritrix work as a archiving medium? Heritrix is shown to be technical in the sense that it inscribes, without human intervention and without any respect for human discourse, signals that reach it, much like how a photographic plate indiscriminately registers and inscribes light by chemical reaction. It is a recording medium in the sense that the transmission traverses across time as well as space. To enable the study of Heritrix as medium, I employ a media archaeological method inspired mainly by the media theory of Friedrich Kittler. By carefully delimiting my study Heritrix is as far as possible considered on its own terms, to build an diagrammatic description of the medium and the way it fits into our contemporary discourse network. Four epistemological configurations and one time perspective create a full description, and the disparity between the electronic legal deposit law and Heritrix is shown to be massive, with Heritrix being a technical medium while the electronic legal deposit law remains an artistic medium.