This transformation is inseparable from the intensification of relational metadata. Each DOI no longer points to an isolated object but anchors a node within a dense graph of associations: authorship, institutional affiliation, funding streams, citation networks. The accumulation of nearly two billion cited-by relations signals a shift from linear knowledge organisation to recursive relationality, where meaning emerges through position within the network rather than through sequential argument. The identifier becomes less a pointer than a vector of integration, continuously recalibrated as new relations are inscribed. In this context, the distinction between document and dataset collapses. A paper is no longer a bounded artefact but a dynamic aggregation of linked entities, each capable of independent circulation and recombination. The implications of this regime extend into domains previously resistant to such granularity. Audiovisual materials, long governed by temporal continuity, are increasingly decomposed into addressable segments—frames, clips, annotations—each susceptible to identification and citation. Cinematic time is fragmented into discrete units, transforming narrative flow into a sequence of indexed coordinates. What was once experienced as duration becomes a navigable dataset. This decomposition exemplifies a broader tendency: the dissolution of the object into granular, interoperable components, each integrated into the wider graph. The identifier does not merely stabilise the object; it disassembles and redistributes it across an infrastructural field. At scale, this produces what can be described as an infinite mint: a system capable of issuing identifiers without apparent limit, continuously converting new forms of activity into registrable units. Yet this apparent abundance masks a structural constraint. The value of the identifier is not intrinsic but relational, dependent on its position within the graph and the infrastructures that sustain it. As issuance accelerates, the risk is not scarcity but saturation, where the proliferation of nodes diminishes their discriminative capacity. The end of ephemerality thus coincides with the emergence of a new problem: how to maintain legibility, hierarchy, and meaning within an environment of total inscription. The DOI, once a tool for stabilising reference, becomes an agent of systemic transformation, mediating not only how knowledge is preserved but how it is structured, accessed, and ultimately understood.
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