# Thesis plan

###### tags:`Research Plan`,`2022`

Working document

## Acknowledgments.
## Abstract.
## Résumé.
## Foreword (position)

## **Chapter A:** Introduction

1. The context in which this thesis was done.
... At HEAD
... at EPFL
... Station of Commons
... Pedagogical experiments

2. Understading what is at stake when refering to internet "protocols"

3. Research questions explained:

- How could P2P protocols, decentralized technologies and open source principles be used in the context of spatial design practices? How could this impact the current methodologies put in place?

- P2P Technologies by definition pose contradictions to current political and social dynamics; how are designers being affected by them? What speculative scenarios of collective design work could emerge from decentralized principles?

- How could designers understand then appropriate these technologies for rethinking their workflows or adding them in their toolkit to solve design problems? How can designers’ methods help communicate the challenges of these technologies to the public,outside of academia?

- Research objectives:

- Develop frameworks and practices within design research that support early-phase exploration and shaping of Decentralized technologies within smart city discourses.

- Analyze critically the historical process that go through phases of decentralization from the context of design and architecture disciplines

- Analyze the interdependence between these centralized and decentralized phases of informatics and their relation to spatial practices of city-making, reflecting and expanding from the dialectic processes at play within.

- Decentralization of what? Quoting Danah Abdulah "Designerly Ways of Knowing: a working inventory of things a designer should know": **Reconfigure a discipline**

## Lexicon: Create a clear vocabulary for the thesis

Key Terms ¶
Decentralization
Network architecture that avoids reliance on a single party. Encompasses peer-to-peer, blockchain, federated, and distributed technologies that involve many individual users.

Peer-to-Peer (p2p)
Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Popularized by BitTorrent, Napster, and Bitcoin.[1]

Federated
Federation allows separate deployments of a service to communicate with each other through a common protocol, for instance a mail server run by Google federates with a mail server run by Microsoft when you send an email from @gmail.com to @hotmail.com.[2] Each deployment may host multiple users.

Blockchain
A distributed ledger that can record transactions between multiple parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.[3]

Distributed systems
Academic topic within the discipline of Computer Science which is concerned with the design of computer systems that consist of many individual computers connected over a network. Peer-to-peer networks and blockchains are examples of distributed systems architectures.

WebRTC
A protocol standard for establishing connections in a web browser where data passes directly between users.

TCP/UDP
The two foundational transport protocols used on the Internet. Common protocols used to send data between two computers.

DHT
Distributed hash table, used in some projects to connect peers to each other by storing information in the form of key-value pairs in a distributed manner.

IP address
A number of a computer or network which is unique and thus can be used to address it.

Hash
A number, usually displayed as a string of letters and numbers. It can serve as a ‘fingerprint’ uniquely identifying data.

UX
User experience, the overall experience of a person using a product or a service, especially in terms of how easy it is to use.

End users
Mythical creatures that have been known to visit your website or app. We’ll be using “users” contextually for anyone using a product or service (including a protocol documentation), and emphasize “end users” where we mean individuals and organizations that ultimately adopt an application.

## **Chapter B:** Analysing how the internet became what it is now

**Chapter summary:** In this chapter I will like to expand on my analysis of what made the internet the type of network that it is now and make sense of the mouvements of dWeb, web 3.0, web3, alternative internet.
**Chapter subject:**
**Existing key projects to analyze:** HTTP RFC, Xanadu, Blockchain, IPFS
**Articles and works cited:**
**Interviews to do (if needed):**

- Non-linear analysis of all the layers of the internet (physical, social, mental)
- Spatial consequences of modern internet protocols (examples analysis of Data centers construction, sepulative plans fo cities using distributed ledger in their infrastrcture,)
- Technologies that "support" Commoning and the frictions with intellectual property
- Semantic Web vs WEB 3
- Decentralised Protocols (interface layer and storage)
1 DAT
2 Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
3 Scuttlebut
- P2P history
2.3.1 P2P principles (Michel Bauwens)
2.3.2.Heterarchy
2.3.3.Holoptism
2.3.3.Equipotentiality

## **Chapter C:** Protocols that support decentralization relationship to spatial practices

Chapter summary:
Chapter subject:
Existing key projects to analyze:
Articles and works cited:
Interviews to do (if needed):

- A history of decentralisation dynamics in Design( interaction design?)

- Designers and coding practices

- The impact of contemporary protocols in digital commoning practices
- Bridge between Hackers and Architects.
- Digital Commoning practices within P2P

## **Chapter D:** State of the Art
- Blockchain in design practices ( mapping)

2.7 Case Studies
2.6.1 Blockchain and Publishing
2.6.2 P2P alternative web design
2.6.3 Decentralized forms of the Internet of Things
2.6.4 Graphic Design tools for consensus and collaboration
2.6.5 Local network WiFi for community purposes

## **Chapter D:** Methodology
Chapter summary:
Chapter subject:
Existing key projects to analyze:
Articles and works cited:
Interviews to do (if needed):

- Why research through design?

## **Chapter E:** Artefacts
Chapter summary:
Chapter subject:
Existing key projects to analyze:
Articles and works cited:
Interviews to do (if needed):

- contextualising the prototypes
- Piece #1: Sound installation
- Piece #2: Community WiFi network
- Piece #3: IPFS Hosted Website
- how do the artefacts chosen become full circle?