Of the thesis entitled: A Seat at My Table
Abstract:
The rate at which new data is created increases rapidly day by day, but the human capacity to process and learn information cannot keep up. This leaves us confused and misguided, yet complacent in a new era of simplification. It is an endlessly entropic process that only makes it more difficult for us to discern the cause and effect. Atom by atom, how did each particle of the universe get to where it is now? Where will they go in the future? Only an omniscient daemon knows.
Technology, monetary policy, globalization, and computerized financial instruments laid the foundation for Western economic dominance, but did so through misaligned incentive structures and asymmetric risk principles designed to exacerbate wealth inequality and class immobility. A global housing crisis has swept cities subscribing to late-stage capitalism, with housing costs and debt having risen dramatically compared to wages over the past few decades despite reportedly successful economies. Industries have shifted from manufacturing to services, becoming entangled with niche engineered concepts in order to satisfy market cycles and raise living standards. We forfeit knowledge and agency over our spaces for convenient induction while accruing unprecedented debt.
An agency problem emerges when we entrust middle translators in politics, finance, and Big Tech to make decisions in our best interest without equitably distributing stakes and exposure. The allocation of land and resources created the basis for long-term economic performance in North America, fostering a unique blend of individualism, social mobility, and optimism for the future. Citizens were supposed to be able to participate in financial markets using their property as collateral, and this seduced many into the ideologies of unregulated capitalism and individual opportunity. However, by the 21st century those markets had become unrecognizable mutilations of what they were intended to be. 76% of Canada’s wealth is held in the real estate market, which along with the construction industry and the architectural profession, is subject to this newfound relationship with technology and data.
The radical novelty of automatic computation has made the information management trade of both physical and intellectual property more vital to global economies than ever, composing most of our value and workforce. But citizens possess a limited understanding of these systems despite this rapidly deepening reliance on them. Not only is real estate commoditized, but the behaviours within those spaces are as well. Massive breakthroughs such as high frequency trading and smart devices have integrated into both our physical and virtual spaces while bypassing all of our senses, operating on a hidden plane. This brings a lack of accountability and transparency in Big Tech to an era of automated smart cities that lawmakers are ill-prepared for.
In many ways it is already too late for the incoming generation; the momentum gathered in the past century has thrust us on an unpredictable trajectory that we have little hope of controlling. We are spiraling through capitalism and consumerism with a swing of ideological momentum so strong that it would take forces more viscerally impactful than the foresight of long-term welfare to override it. Our physical and digital spaces are designed, built, valuated, and monitored through loaded premises that have repeatedly led to disasters, for which future generations and the least fortunate must pay. How did we reach this level of systemic moral hazard?
However, digitally interconnected systems born out of frustration with modern policy can play a crucial role in combating these issues without disrupting the benefits of a techno-utopia. What if we could befriend the omniscient daemon? How can blockchain integration and ergodic probability promote efficiency, security, trust, wealth equality, and transparency in the spaces we consider home? This giant spaceship we call Earth is rapidly changing at every moment. How can the systems that control our built environments catch up?
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
Donald McKay, University of Waterloo
Committee Member:
Robert
Jan
van
Pelt,
University
of
Waterloo
Val
Rynnimeri,
University
of
Waterloo
External Reader:
Douglas Birkenshaw
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Tuesday
September
10,
2019
1:00
PM
Loft
Gallery
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.