The essay distinguishes:
- interpretive retroaction: a later work changes how earlier works are read;
- infrastructural retroaction: a later classification or retrieval system changes which earlier works are found and connected.
Its economic model includes:
- semantic capital: accumulated cultural meaning;
- semantic revaluation: later systems increase or decrease visibility and value;
- semantic rent: value captured from inherited meaning without equivalent return;
- canonical crystallization: fluid historical material becomes stabilized as tradition;
- prospective provenance anchors: present deposits built for future retrieval.
The paper treats search, tagging, metadata, and recommendation as canon-making institutions.