Interactive Design and Game Development MFA thesis research

Malcom McCullough might be one of the wisest voices I’ve come across in my research. His exploration of the intersection of ubiquitous computing and architecture in Digital Ground is not only rigorous in its details but thorough in its scope. He not only does the topic justice but by the end he synthesizes philosophical issues, computation, and his own personal domain knowledge of architecture into the most cognisant argument for sustainability I’ve heard to date. In general he shows how pervasive computing is not just “new” but how it throws into relief very old ideas that formed our current economic culture. In discussing contextual or situated computing, he doesn’t simply provide techno-fetishistic conjecture, he dives deep into what place is, the topology of places we know and will continue to know, the qualities of a place as an assemblage of value, and how value itself is determined. While only pieces of Digital Ground bare particular relevance to my specific thesis topic, the writings by Dourish, Lakoff, and Johnson that he references are proving instrumental to my research. Reading this book is time-well-spent.