the thesis has a bunch of reasons.
my undergraduate education taught me how to think about making things.
my graduate education taught me how to actually make anything.
between the two, i made many things — both — to be used by other people (in the hope of improving their life), and to communicate with (or express to) other people.
i don’t want to do either for those for my thesis. these are my arguments against them:
- for other people: making something for someone else is an unfeasible thesis for itp (or any education for that matter). a good tool embeds itself in the lives of other people, and that phenomenon can only be observed after a long period of time; often when the ‘users’ are unobserved.
- to communicate with other people: this is easy to do at itp (or in my life after itp). due to its subjectivity, it is very difficult to know whether you’ve done a good job or not; and even if you have markers that point towards a good job (like with me, my father & our neurons), it feels too shallow to be a year-long thesis to explore.
the thesis is to put my education to the test.
the world makes big claims about technology: x will change human-lives as we know it — and it does, but change is often dictated by the select few in power; often in ways that benefit them.