The creator of the "Don't Go There" site designed it to shut itself down after 100 hits to one of the site's buttons. Vistors were told this would happen, but many clicked anyway. In fact, the site only survived for 57 minutes before it "died." Part of the attraction, the designer stated, was to create a piece of digital media that degraded just as analog products do.

The story from Wired News.

Surely many web sites carry the traces of visitors, but these traces seem to simply accrete to the site rather than negatively affect its longevity. What if such web surfing had "impact" on the sites visited, similar to the "ecological footprint" that you leave on the land you inhabit?

What the designer mentions in the article sounds like a type of 'effective non-action'--exploring the ways in which refusals and denials can be productive. There is a recent article in JAC that deals with effective silences that might connect with the ideas here.

Considering the current U.S. administration's headlong rush towards war and their pushing of ecological issues to the background, is there room for these rhetorics of restraint?