Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-85). / While technological development of vehicular autonomy has been progressing rapidly, a parallel discussion has emerged with regard to the moral implications of a future wherein people hand over to autonomous machines the controls to a mode of transportation. These discussions have entered a new phase with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) releasing a 15-point policy that requires manufacturers to explain how their AVs will handle "ethical considerations". However, there is a huge gap in our understanding of the ethical perception of Al, as there have been few large-scale empirical studies on human moral perception of outcomes to autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas. Additionally, public engagement is a very important piece of the puzzle, especially given the emotional salience of traffic accidents. With that in mind, I co-developed the "Moral Machine" (http://moralmachine.mit.edu). Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as AVs. The web site went viral, and got covered in various media outlets. This web site has also been a valuable data collection tool, allowing us to collect the largest dataset on Al ethics ever collected in history (with 30 million decisions by over 3 million visitors, so far). This thesis will introduce the Moral Machine platform as a data-gathering platform. Moreover, insights about the human perception of the different routes to full automation will be covered in the thesis, with the data collected through other online platforms. / by Edmond Awad. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 86-90). / In this thesis, I explore relationships between form generation, material properties, and design constraints in search of a new framework for designing with unpredictable or unstable material systems using glass 3D printing as a case study. Molten glass forming has always been difficult to accurately predict or model, but also offers a high degree of geometric complexity or hierarchy through organic formations. Top-down design approaches to material tunability and control are enabled by new digital fabrication tools and technologies that offer some of most successful attempts to design at scales approaching that of nature [38] [20]. Bottom-up, material-driven systems design functionality, itself, around organically formed structures to challenge our perspective of designing for utility, and how to define that utility [18]. The glass 3D printer, developed by The Mediated Matter Group in collaboration with the MIT Glass Lab, has been an important case study long in the making. A novel type of glass forming quickly gave way to a dialogue with highly unstable material behaviors, structures too complex to model in real time and visually compelling, frozen in time with cooling temperatures. The process generates new types of glass structures and visual output, enabling new design typologies for the product and architectural scale. Here I present an array of over a hundred unique design experiments that offer insight into this brand new design space created by complex glass behavior under control of a digital machine and harnessing structural instability. Close study not only of the objects generated but also their behavior during fabrication is key to understanding how the glass responds to the motion of the machine. Analysis of the project workflow itself provides the foundation for a framework capable of handling an active and complex material system, identifying how and when machine control can be used directly, how and when organic material formation can take place, and how the two interface from design tool to fabrication tool to design product. Finally, I look ahead to the potential for new product and architectural functionalities enabled by this platform, and I establish concepts for using the highly complex forms with the mapped "design space" as a guide for what we understand to be possible. The goal is to form new knowledge about material-informed digital fabrication through the generation of new glass forms and designs. / by Daniel Lizardo. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 67-69). / Collaborations between Makers and Nonprofits are mutually beneficial. They give makers an opportunity to practice their skills, understand their value and have a real world impact. In turn, Nonprofits gain different perspectives on their challenges and get to collaborate towards solutions that otherwise may not be in their reach. These collaborations also pose unique challenges. Nonprofits with fewer resources will often have difficulties defining their problems, not to mention specifying a solution. They do, however, have a compelling story to tell, the story of their mission, their processes and their constraints. Makers, with their unique cross-discipline skill set can extract challenges, problems and solutions from these stories. This thesis outlines this process of story-centric brainstorming and collaboration, and presents a web application, This is How, in which stories are represented as videos, enriched with timeline based discussion and collaborative pads. / by Tomer Weller. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-92). / Despite an increasingly complex academic discourse, the videogame medium lacks an agreed-upon definition. Its relationship to previous media is somewhat unclear, and the unique attributes of the medium have not yet been fully catalogued. Drawing on theory suggesting that videogames can convey ideas, I will argue that the videogame medium is capable of modeling and critiquing elements of moral philosophy in a unique manner. To make this argument, I first address a number of questions about the proper definition of videogames, how games in general and videogames specifically convey ideas, and how games can be constructed to form arguments. Having defined my terms, I will conduct case studies on three games (Fable, Command & Conquer: Generals, and The Punisher), clarifying how the design of each could be modified to address a specific philosophical issue. / by Peter E. Rauch. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-87). / The need and desire to create objects is built into human civilization throughout history. The immense diversity of cultures in the world has led to the development of tremendously diverse design and making traditions. Each of these reflects unique imagination threads in our collective thought process and carries immense value in the growth of it. These days, we are witnessing a rise in the digital maker movement, propelled by digital fabrication machines like 3D printers. These are democratizing manufacturing, however, a point to note is that all of the CAD (computer aided design) software tools to design objects for digital fabrication have been developed in an industrial context. This inherently means that these tools support operations like extrude, revolve etc., but not traditional operations like weaving techniques (plaiting, twining etc.) for example. Digital design language therefore lacks a representation of the diverse making traditions and as such these are not accessible to people to design with. This projects to a subsequent decline in usage of these traditional methods resulting in them slowly fading out. Instead, modem design tools should celebrate the diversity of making traditions and harness the strength of digital means combining it with traditional operations and aesthetics to create objects that were not possible with either of them individually. Through this thesis, I explore questions around how traditional making practices can be incorporated in CAD tools. How can one approach the design of such a tool and what is the variety of design possibilities this opens up, once the traditional and modern techniques inter-weave. I present InterWoven, a CAD tool that aids people in creating designs using traditional basket-weaving techniques. / by Harshit Agrawal. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-113). / Title as it appears in MIT Degrees Awarded booklet, Sept. 2008: Viral communication in Chinese online forums / This thesis explores various aspects of the online Bulletin Board System (BBS) world as they relate to the possibilities of the public sphere in China. It addresses two major questions: what has BBS brought to China where traditional media primarily serve as the mouthpiece of the government? And, why are Chinese netizens, especially younger generation, particularly enthusiastic about this online platform? Through a full- dimensional view into BBS'S information communication mechanism and BBS users' identities, social behaviors and values, we investigate the pros and cons of BBS in terms of its potential to contribute to cyberdemocracy in China. The Introduction addresses research motivations, critical questions, and research goals. It also provides an overview of China's Internet landscape and a brief review of Chinese BBS studies. Chapter One walks through the history and development of BBS in China, and analyzes the demographics and online behavioral patterns of BBS users. Chapter Two looks into the distinct information communication mechanism of BBS as well as BBS regulation and censorship in China. Chapter Three looks at a cohort of BBS users, exploring who are using BBS in China, why they are enthusiastic about this online community, and what are their distinct identities, social behaviors and values. The Conclusion makes explicit the relevance of these developments to the ongoing growth of the Chinese Public Sphere. / by Liwen Jin. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2010. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-128). / The American television industry is in a moment of transition because of changes brought about by digital distribution and audience fragmentation. This thesis argues that the television industry can no longer adapt to the changing media landscape because structural relationships and business logics forged in previous eras do not allow for meaningful innovation. This project investigates how these relationships evolved and how they can be made more flexible to meet the challenges of digital distribution and digitally networked audiences. Legacy relationships, logics, and measurement methods have prevented the television industry from maximizing the value of increasingly fragmented television audiences. Publishers, advertisers, and measurement companies have historically been able to get around the limitations of their relationships to one another, but they are now faced with increasing competition from digital companies that understand how to make fragmented audiences valuable. This thesis argues that the methodologies and corporate ethos of successful online companies can serve as a model for the television industry, or they can be its undoing. This project also argues that the television ratings system is no longer serving the television industry, the advertising industry, and television audiences. The television industry has the opportunity to develop a system of audience measurement that maintains the residual value of television audiences while accounting for the value of audience expression. To leverage the true value of the television audience, the television industry must reconcile the commodity value of the audience with the cultural value that viewers derive from television programming. This thesis proposes that the cultural value of content should augment the commodity value of the audience. This project concludes that the television industry should reconfigure its economic structure by looking to other digital business, experimenting with new business models online, and actively exploring emergent sites of audience value. / by Sheila Murphy Seles. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-74). / This thesis presents BurstMapper, a system for detecting and characterizing bursts of tweets generated by multiple sources in order to understand interactions between Twitter users and the role of exogenous events (not directly observable on Twitter) in driving tweets. The first stage of the system finds temporal clusters, or bursts of tweets. The second stage characterizes bursts along two dimensions, semantic coherence and causal influence. Semantic coherence measures the semantic relatedness of the tweets in a burst to each other based on a deep neural network derived embedding of tweet contents. Causal influence measures the potential causal interaction between Twitter users using the Hawkes process model. We introduce an annotated corpus of 7,220 tweets produced by five leading candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Evaluating the system on the annotated corpus shows that with a precision of 75%, tweets caused clearly by specific exogenous events (or responsive tweets hereafter) are detected by the burst detector components of our system. Furthermore, experiments show that the linear combination of semantic coherence and causal influence are predictive of the presence of responsive tweets in a burst, with the Fl-score of 0.76. Examining bursts along the two dimensions reveals that (i) the measures are positively correlated with each other (corr=0.33, p<0.001), (ii) the measures allow us to understand how candidates tend to respond differently to exogenous events, e.g., by attacking opponents or making plan announcements, and (iii) the measures can be used to describe the influence dynamics between candidates over time. Plotting the bursts from a corpus of 1,470 Twitter accounts (the five leading candidates and the users followed by them) shows visual evidence that some user groups (e.g., campaign staffs, journalists, etc.) have a higher levels of semantic coherence and causal interactions. These experiments suggest that the bursts detected by our system provide a useful level of abstraction that summarizes tweet content, providing a solution for coping with massive amount of data on Twitter. / by Pau Perng-Hwa Kung. / S.M.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-149). / Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, on December 8, 2017 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media, Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Throughout history, Nature has always been part of the discourse in Design theory and practice. The Digital Age in Design brings about new computational tools, redefining the role of Nature in Design. In this thesis, I aim to expand the role of Nature in Design and digital fabrication by investigating distributed fabrication strategies for the production of constructs that are, at once, large in scale and materially tunable towards swarm-based design. Digital fabrication approaches can be classified with respect to two basic attributes: (1) the degree of material tailorability, and (2) the level of collaboration between fabrication units. Conventional manufacturing is typically confined to only one of these attribute axes, with certain approaches utilizing complex tunable materials but virtually no collaboration, and others assembling pre-fabricated building blocks with high levels of intercommunication between fabrication units. A similar pattern is mirrored in biological systems: silkworms, for example, deposit a multifunctional tunable material with minimal communication between organisms; while ants, bees and termites operate as multi-agent communicative entities assembling larger constructs out of simple, unifunctional, 'generic' materials. The purpose of this thesis is to depart from these uniaxial manufacturing approaches and develop a novel swarm-inspired distributed digital fabrication method capable of producing tunable multifunctional materials that is also collaborative. This research merges fiber-based digital fabrication and swarm-based logic to produce a system capable of digitally fabricating complex objects and large-scale architectural components through a novel multi-robotic fabrication paradigm. I hypothesize that this design approach-its theoretical foundations, methodological set up and related tools and technologies-will ultimately enable the design of large-scale structures with high spatial resolution in manufacturing that, like biological swarms, can tune their material make-up relative to their environment during the process of construction. Building on the insights derived from case study projects, fabricating with silkworms, ants, and bees, I demonstrate the design and deployment of a multi-robotic system erecting a 4.5-meter tall structure from fiber composites This thesis addresses the current limitations of digital fabrication, namely: (a) the material limitation, through automated digital fabrication of structural multi-functional materials; (b) the gantry limitation, through the construction of large components from a swarm of cooperative small scale robots; and (c) the method limitation, through digital construction methods that are not limited to layered manufacturing, but also support free-form printing (i.e. 3D-printing without support materials), CNC woven constructions and digitally aggregated constructions. / by Markus Kayser. / Ph. D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2008. / "June 2008." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-113). / What is Chinatown? Is it an imaginary construct, a real location, or a community? Is it an ethnic enclave only available to insiders, or a fabricated environment designed specifically for tourists? This thesis attempts to reconcile the multiple ways in which Chinatowns in the U.S. are conceived, understood, and used by both insiders and outsiders of the community. By using Henri Lefebvre's triad of spatial analysis (as detailed in The Production of Space), I create an analytical narrative through which to understand the layered dimensions of Chinatown through the realms of perceived, conceived and lived space. In the first chapter, I closely analyze the visual landscape of an actual location, Tyler Street in Boston's Chinatown, in order to decipher the spatial (and therefore economic and cultural) practices that shape the environment. In chapter 2, I discuss the representations of Chinatown, or the space as it has been conceived by media makers including photographers, writers and filmmakers. By looking at these through the lens of tourism, I create a framework for analyzing the many cinematic depictions of the neighborhood. In the last chapter, I return to the actual spaces of lived Chinatowns, in particular San Francisco's Chinatown as captured in the independent film Chan is Missing (1981), and Boston's Chinatown, as exemplified by three Chinese restaurants in the area. I use Erving Goffman's idea of everyday performance in order to dissect the ways in which people and spaces perform "Chinese-ness" for outsiders of the community. By focusing all three chapters on the material, tangible artifacts of the physical environment, or what I call 'Visual Chinatown,' I hope to create a unified vision of how spaces are created in popular culture. / by Debora A. Lui. / S.M.