“In today's highly commercialised web of multinational corporations, proprietary applications, read-only devices, search algorithms, Content Management Systems, WYSIWYG editors, and digital publishers it becomes an increasingly radical act to hand-code and self-publish experimental web art and writing projects.” - J.R. Carpenter, The Handmade Web

38% of webpages that were online in 2013 are no longer accessible."23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites." (Pew Research, 2024)

Despite these statistics, the digital realm is often perceived as more permenant than the physical. Libraries and museums work hard to digitize their collections, despite the fact that we have already lost access to multiple forms of early digital documentation.

"Next to the impact of archives on collective memory and human identity, participation in the digital archive generates another kind of unintentional memory, a ‘data shadow’, which is collected in exchange for free access to these platforms."