The aesthetics of decentralization

This thesis explores ways in which decentralized network technologies are used to experiment with and design new modes of socio-technical organization. Drawing on an understanding of aesthetics as a "distribution of the sensible" and Jack Burnham's notion of "systems esthetics", an artistic engagement with society's technological modes of organization, I explore the ways in which the "aesthetics of decentralization" articulates a circuit of desire connecting technical systems, cultural metaphors and social forms. A key countercultural motif in the history of the World Wide Web, decentralization imagines that political objectives of openness, freedom and even libertarian self-sovereignty within a networked society can be achieved through the technical protocols. Chapter 1 examines the logics of the "stack" and the "platform" as the vertical and lateral organizational abstractions of this environmental matrix.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Zhexi,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Renée Green.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123614

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123614