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<a href="har/drudgereport.com+2015-07-08+23-24-20.html">(Experimental) Bugs Forensics</a><br> (text/code renditions of various bugs)
<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>
This project aims to investigate the web through the micro-temporal logistics of data exchange, zeroing in on the timings of information transfer, the processing and rendering of content, and the presencing of digital objects as they are assembled by the browser. As part of the post-Snowden subtheme of the Digital Methods Summer School 2015 in Amsterdam, we examine these dynamics with an emphasis on devices for the commercial capture of user data or web bugs.
</p>
<h2>SUMMARY</h2>
<h2>Summary</h2>
<p>
Despite a widespread fixation on the real time web and instantaneity, the web is a heterochronic infrastructure. Requesting and receiving data is characterized by different micro-temporalities as information is transmitted over the diverse network segments from multiple servers through a variety of protocols and onto a further array of devices and browsers. Dealing with this complexity is a significant challenge for designers and developers who aim to deliver content as quickly as possible, a task that has become especially challenging following the rise of the mobile web and the increasing fragmentation of technical standards. In this respect, performance optimization has become one subsector of user experience (UX) that uses a range of techniques and strategies to negotiate and manage this complex infrastructure for the timely delivery of content. There is, moreover, often a strong commercial incentive to optimize for speed: excessive loading times, site freezing and crashing have a direct impact on conversion rates and, therefore, profit.
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</p>
<p>
In this respect, the project takes inspiration from recent work in affect theory, post-phenomenology and media studies that aims to conceptualize the mediation of media. For instance, as Mark B. N. Hansen observes in his recent book Feed-Forward, the tendency of twenty-first century media is “to operate at microtemporal scales without any necessary let alone direct connection to human sense perception and conscious awareness” (2015: 37). Microsensors and smart devices provide an unprecedented degree of mediated intervention into experience, environmentally transforming the possibilities for sense and perception. For Hansen, these infrastructures “challenge us to construct a relationship with them” (37). A key difficulty here, however, lies with the excessive centralization of resources in contemporary data capitalism when it comes to the chances we have to enact such a relationship indeed, we face a problematic of unequal deliberation time, whereby “time itself becomes an agent of surplus value extraction that operates within a system structurally dedicated to exploiting the imbalance between microtemporal, machinic sensibility and human consciousness” (55). With these challenges in mind, there is a need to construct new interfaces, technologies and devices to render the operations of computational infrastructures salient to human modes of experience and thought. This project aims to do so through visualizations of rendering paths and the sonification of the microtemporal dynamics of webpages as they load in order to feed-forward the presencing of web bugs.
In this respect, the project takes inspiration from recent work in affect theory, post-phenomenology and media studies that aims to conceptualize the mediation of media. For instance, as Mark B. N. Hansen observes in his recent book <i>Feed-Forward</i>, the tendency of twenty-first century media is “to operate at microtemporal scales without any necessary let alone direct connection to human sense perception and conscious awareness” (2015: 37). Microsensors and smart devices provide an unprecedented degree of mediated intervention into experience, environmentally transforming the possibilities for sense and perception. For Hansen, these infrastructures “challenge us to construct a relationship with them” (37). A key difficulty here, however, lies with the excessive centralization of resources in contemporary data capitalism when it comes to the chances we have to enact such a relationship indeed, we face a problematic of unequal deliberation time, whereby “time itself becomes an agent of surplus value extraction that operates within a system structurally dedicated to exploiting the imbalance between microtemporal, machinic sensibility and human consciousness” (55). With these challenges in mind, there is a need to construct new interfaces, technologies and devices to render the operations of computational infrastructures salient to human modes of experience and thought. This project aims to do so through visualizations of rendering paths and the sonification of the microtemporal dynamics of webpages as they load in order to feed-forward the presencing of web bugs.
</p>
<h2>RESEARCH QUESTIONS</h2>
<h2>Research Questions</h2>
<p>
<ul>
@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ In this respect, the project takes inspiration from recent work in affect theory
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</p>
<h2>METHODOLOGY</h2>
<h2>Methodology</h2>
<p>
The project focusses on news webpages, a category of sites that potentially contain high levels of web bugs due to difficulties of monetizing their content.
@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ The project focusses on news webpages, a category of sites that potentially cont
</ul>
<h2>FINDINGS</h2>
<h2>Findings</h2>
<p>
Data reveals the variety of design strategies and intentionality that characterizes commercial news sites, raising significant questions regarding the business models and complex interrelationships between first and third party actors across the commercial web.
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<li>Finally, the project reveals the possibility to carry out phenomenological research on the sub-perceptual or pre-cognitive dimensions of digital media. As digital media diversifies in content and structure, there is need to find more intuitive ways to understand and experience it, or understand it by experiencing it. </li>
</ul>
<h2>FURTHER RESEARCH</h2>
<h2>Further Research</h2>
<ul>
<li>As the project exposes the hidden through sensory representations, the visual compositions and musical experiences can become tools for unique interpretation and reflection on web interfaces. These representations might be used to start conversations with designers and developers about the composition of their sites.</li>
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<li>Where and how can we locate a users agency and deliberation to choose how to navigate a website? </li>
</ul>
<h2>KEYWORDS</h2>
<h2>Keywords</h2>
<p>web tracking, performance optimization, micro-temporalities, network latency, ghostery, webpagetest, news websites</p>
<h2>TEAM MEMBERS</h2>
<h2>Team Members</h2>
<p>Erik Borra, Kim Burgas, Michael Dieter, Javier Trujillo Garcia, David Gauthier, Emillie de Keulenaar</p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Hansen, Mark B. N. <em>Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media</em>. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2015.</p>
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