The Physical Presence of the Digital World

Abstract

The apparent lines between the digital and physical worlds are becoming increasingly blurred. What we perceive happening is an integration of both worlds in which a faster, smarter and more efficient society is born out of. Our ever-growing digital world is being marketed as sexy and sleek and the products that are created to connect you to that world as status symbols. The emphasis placed upon the importance of our digital lives and digital world ensures that the ugly truths about how it operates and the ramifications it creates are kept veiled from view. The view is so well hidden behind the mask of evocative and enticing marketing campaigns that even the physical architecture of the digital world goes virtually unnoticed. Most people don’t perceive anything of the infrastructural requirements or environmental impacts of completing even the most mundane tasks within the digital world.

The grim reality is that during a period of time in which sustainability and technology have become dominant pieces of public discourse we have created a new and rapidly expanding world that functions as the antithesis of sustainability. The physical manifestations of this digital world are hidden in plain sight within our built environment, yet many do not recognize their presence. While the environmental impacts of the digital world increase, so too does the divide between the physical and digital worlds. The user is only connected to the digital world through the screen of a device, but is completely disconnected from the physical reality of digital space. With the digital world expanding at exponential rates we have reached a point at which a critical analysis of the digital world and how it intersects with the physical is warranted. This thesis aims to understand the ramifications of the digital world on the physical and seeks to develop a means to architecturally question the physical manifestations of the digital to both inform and draw connections for the user between both worlds in which we live.