Cybernetic maintenance : exploring infrastructure legibility of waste systems at MIT
Name
1136159460-MIT.pdf
Size
19.44 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c9d99e65d5079f5197a9297edfaa234d
Author(s)
Cameron, Agnes Fury.
Advisor(s)
Andrew Lippman.
Alternative Title
Exploring infrastructure legibility of waste systems at MIT
Date Issued
2019
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
If Waste is Information, what can be learned from an understanding of waste management at MIT as a complex information system? Through engaging people with their role within a waste system, can relations to and practices of waste management change? This thesis presents a case study for making and evaluating context-driven and critical civic games in partnership with local organisations. Working with waste management and sustainability efforts on campus, I explore issues with waste at MIT as a 'crisis of representation', drawing on ideas from systems theory, participatiory urbanism, environmental psychology and game design to develop a new 'systems image' of waste on campus. Through two controlled studies, I examine the potentials and limitations of such work for changing attitudes and behaviours, and the pitfalls of attempting to separate educational interventions from their infrastructural context. More generally, this project contributes to an understanding of how we might use participatory, critical and exploratory games to make legible complex civic systems, and the role of that legibility in changing both individuals, and the systems themselves.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2019
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [95]-104).
Subjects
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
MIT Department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
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