1. Project: re:DDS, Web Archaeology
the REconstruction of De Digitale Stad
Amsterdam Museum, Tjarda de Haan (guest e-curator & web archaeologist)
University of Malta, 22 May 2014
Library, Information and Archive Sciences Department
Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences

2. Project re:DDS
Amsterdam Museum:
• The story of Amsterdam – your entry to the city!
• Formerly known as the Amsterdam Historical Museum.
Digital collections:
• Web: Corporate site, co-creation platform.
• Social: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr.
• Mobile: Collection App, MuseumApp.
• Semantic & Open Data: Online collection, Europeana, Apps for Amsterdam,
Wikipedia.

3. Wayback in Amsterdam in 1994…
In the wild, wild cyberspace
arose a virtual city
from networkcables, computers and modems…
… De Digitale Stad - DDS - The Digital City
Project re:DDS

4. 2014: Help! Our digital heritage is getting lost!
• UNESCO’s 'Charter on the preservation of the digital heritage' (2003): "The world’s digital
heritage is at risk of being lost“ (…) and “it’s preservation is an urgent issue of worldwide
concern".
• Material: complex, transitive and dynamic.
• Methodes: difference between web-harvesting and web-archaeology. Web-harvesting is the
equivalent of taking a photographic snapshot of an object, while we aim to recreate the
object itself by digital excavating.
• Division of tasks: who will take which responsibilities to reconstruct, preserve and retrieve
born-digital heritage and make it accessible to the public? We badly need a central
repository for tools (for example to read obsolete media) and a comprehensive software
library.
• Approach: no standards. Given the urgency we can not wait. So just do it ... and trial and
error!
Project re:DDS

5. What is De Digitale Stad - The Digital City (1994-2001)?
• 1st (free) public domain virtual city in the world.
• 1st Dutch online community.
• 1st time internet (free) accessible to general public in the Netherlands.
• Grounded by a fluid group: independent media, hackers and the municipality of Amsterdam.
• Inspired by the Free-Nets movement in the US and Canada.
• Attracted international interest for the design: metaphor of a city to structure cyberspace.
• Good for the cyberreputation of the city of Amsterdam:
• CNN (1997): "For hundreds of years the city of Amsterdam has been a center of commercial trade,
art and education. Now it’s helping point the way in the information revolution too ".
• Manuel Castells (The Internet Galaxy, 2001): "The most famous citizen computer network. (…) A
new form of public sphere combining local institutions, grassroots organisations, and computer
networks in the development of cultural expression and civic participation".
• Inhabitants (the users): 1994: 10.000 - 1997: 60.000 - 1998: 80.000 - 2000: 140.000.
Project re:DDS

6. The evolution of the web:
In 2014:
• 45 years ago (1969): Birth of Internet.
• 25 years ago (1989): Invention of World Wide Web.
• 20 years ago (1994): online community DDS launched.
Project re:DDS

7. /lost+found: interfaces of the virtual city
DDS1.0 - 15 January 1994 DDS3.0 - 10 June 1995
DDS2.0 - 1 October 1994
DDS 0.1 – Never online…
Project re:DDS

8. Goals of the project re:DDS (REconstruction of De Digitale Stad):
• To preserve the internet-historical monument DDS.
• To map the history of the DDS, internet and e-culture in Amsterdam.
• To include the DDS in the collections of the heritage institutions.
• And… a pilot for net-archaeology: how to reconstruct, preserve and retrieve the virtual city
DDS (DDS is born-digital) and make it accessible to the public, on a scientific and social level?
Project re:DDS

9. Project re:DDS
What do we do & where are we now?
‘Information Research & Data Recovery’
1. Start:
• Launch of Open History Lab: re:DDS.nl.
2. Digg:
•The Grave Diggers Party.
• Crowdsourcing in Open History Lab.
3. Analyse & reconstruction:
• The Rise of Zombies: crowdsourcing & co-creation.
• Flight of Zombies: DDS in ‘multiple-points-in-time’?
4. Delivery for collections and presentations:
• Let the Bytes Free!
5. Finish project:
• Conclusions, evaluation, documentation, knowledge sharing.

10. Grave Diggers Party, Friday the 13th
1. Working space  The Archaeological Site re:DDS
• Workstations:
• Bring and upload your code.
• Digg in the Wayback Machine and store excavations in Historical (e-)Depot.
• Share your stories and memories in the Open History Lab re:DDS.nl.
• Tools:
• Computers: excavators.
• Storage: buckets.
• UNIX commands, mice: pades, pick-axe, trowels.
• Scripts : metal detectors.
• USB: find bags.
• Metadata: find cards.
2. Museum space  Tourist Tours
• /Lost+found: ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’:
• Hardware: servers, terminals, modembanks, taperobots etc.
• Screenshots of DDS.
• Billboard’s:
• What is DDS? Where are you? What is this site? Why this site?
Project re:DDS

11. Project re:DDS
Workshops Web-archaeology
Ever compiled a program? Ever patched a binary? Do you know what the checksums of your systems
files are? Ever found the digital needle in a haystack? Web-archeology is finding the unknow
unknows at the edge of yesterdays technology. Web-archeology is digging up the past for the
future.
1. History of De Digitale Stad & introduction of Web-archaeology.
2. DIY Web-archaeology.
3. Interactive Q&A: How to Deal with Lost & Found Raw Data?

12. What are we looking for?
Archaeological remains of the city:
• Software - Interfaces (DDS 1,2,3 and 3.5) and Freezes (1996, DDS3)
• Hardware - Shaman, Alibaba, Aladdin, etc.
• Special projects - DDS Webmix, dds.dds, dds.multcult,
dds.technopolis, de Metro, live.dds.nl, cafés, etc.
• Individual houses and squares - Thisbe, Plein vd Dood, etc.
• Secondary sources - Articles, interviews, video, etc.
Project re:DDS

13. /lost+found:
Digital artefacts:
• 40 gigabytes of raw data (software and
backups including squares, houses,
projects).
• The 'freeze' of 1996 (three tapes: alibaba,
dds and shaman).
Physical artefacts:
• 2 public terminals.
• 4 servers.
• 1 modem bank.
• Manuals, publications, photographs, radio
play, videotapes, DDS original mouse pad,
etc.
Project re:DDS

14. /lost+found: Public terminals
Project re:DDS

15. /lost+found: FREEZE!
Project re:DDS

16. /lost+found: squares
Project re:DDS

17. /lost+found: TV broadcast by Smart TV on the opening DDS
• Live from De Balie of the Amsterdam cable on January 15, 1994.
• With: Internet pioneers Rop Gonggrijp, Felipe Rodriquez and Marleen Stikker
• Official opening by the deputy mayor of Amsterdam Frank de Grave.
Project re:DDS

18. /lost+found: De Digitale Stad newspaper, 1994
Project re:DDS

19. /lost+found: Handbook Digital Cities, 1995
Project re:DDS

20. /lost+found: De Digitale Stedeling, 1996
Project re:DDS

21. /lost+found: Blueprint of the Square of Death
Project re:DDS

22. /lost+found: excavations
Project re:DDS

23. /lost+found: hardware
Project re:DDS

24. Will we succeed? 
• Exposition at the Amsterdam Museum: to present the story of the internet-historical
monument DDS and history of the internet and e-culture in Amsterdam?
• ‘DDS timemachine’ for visitors: interact with history and experience the ‘multiple-points-in-
times’ of DDS: 'How was the internet at the beginning?‘ and ‘How did it look like in the 20th
century?’
• Playground for researchers: browse between the ‘multiple-points-in-time’ of DDS, and
research the evolution of the web in a 4D collection (height, width, depth and… time)?
• DDS in the collections of the heritage institutions?
• Share knowlegde: DIY Manual for Web-archaeology & 23 Things Web-archaeology: how to
reconstruct, preserve and retrieve born-digital material and make it accessible to the public?
Project re:DDS
DDS1.0 - Jan, 15th of 1994
DDS3.0 - June, 10th of 1995
DDS2.0 - Oct, 1st of 1994

25. GOOD NEWS: DDS ín the Amsterdam Museum!
Project re:DDS

26. The next step
Web-archaeology: Crowdsourcing & REconstructing Amsterdam digital cultural heritage.
Our challenge: Will we be able -together-
to transform De Digitale Stad (The Digital
City; DDS) from a virtual Atlantis into
a virtual Pompeii?
Our goal: To reconstruct the virtual city
and to create a 4D collection in which people
can switch between ‘multiple-points-in-time’
and experience the evolution of this
unique virtual city!
Project re:DDS

27. Webscraping is not enough
• Content is user-agent / accept-language / user / Geo-IP dependent.
• We don't deal with static content, but with web applications.
• Not all content is accessible for scrapers.
• It is impossible to know what will be relevant material in the future.
Project re:DDS

28. Digital web-archaeology 2.0
How can we improve this?
• Crawl all sites (this is done by the Internet Archive).
• Acces websites with different UAs / accept-language / IP's to get different content from the
sites.
• Blackbox reconstruction.
• Archive total systems and reconstruct them.
Project re:DDS

29. Total recall
Reconstruct total systems:
• Why does this not happen?
• What are you going to reconstruct?
• How do you handle it?
• Digital forensics, de-NISTing, de-duplicatie, NISTing NextGeneration (tm), fuzzy hashing,
magic, versioning…
Project re:DDS

30. 4D-Collection
• Reconstruction of missing files / detection of corrupt files.
• Data visualization.
• Point-in-time checkout.
• Emulation of total clusters on virtual machines and virtual network.
Project re:DDS

31. Thanks to:
Our partners (till now):
• Old inhabitants, (ex) DDS employees and DDS affiliated web-archeologists.
• De Digitale Stad Holding BV.
• Digital Erfgoed Nederland (DEN).
• Europeana.
• Karin Spaink, independent researcher.
• Stichting Computer Erfgoed Nederland (SCEN).
• The Amsterdam City Archives.
• The International Institute of Social History (IISH).
• The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands).
• The Waag Society.
• UvA Computermuseum.
• UvA Digital Methods Initiative (DMI).
And:
• Guidelines for the Preservating of Digital Heritage (March 2003).
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001300/130071e.pdf.
• IIPC: Web Archives: The Future(s), by Eric T. Meyer, Arthur Thomas, Ralph Schroeder (2011, University of Oxford)
http://netpreserve.org/events/Hague/Presentations/OII-IIPC.pdf.
• Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage: UNESCO http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-
URL_ID=17721&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.
• WIR SIND HIER – Opening TOTAL RECALL – The Evolution of Memory http://www.aec.at/aeblog/en/2013/07/22/wir-
sind-hier-opening-total-recall-the-evolution-of-memory/.
• The excavation of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii Photo: Bridgeman Art Library
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/pompeii/9852299/Pompeii-exhibition-a-timeline-of-Pompeii-and-
Herculaneum.html.
• Talk to the hand by Swamibu - http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/3052879559/ .
• And more: http://www.delicious.com/re_dds/.
Contact: T.deHaan@amsterdammuseum.nl
Project re:DDS