Hello/Hola : welcome to Cristobal Garcia's home page
I am a social scientist doing research and consulting in organizational spaces, mobile technology in cities and political communication.
I am currently a research affiliate at MIT's Political Science Department and co-director of the History Unwired Initiative.
I have a background in sociology and philosophy, completed a Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and I am
currently involved in research and development that span across the social sciences, media design, urban and organizational studies.
Check my current 3 worlds below.
1 Organizational Spaces for learning and innovation
For my Master of Science thesis at MIT, I focused on organizational learning, knowledge generation and innovation practices in design
firms, including IDEO, Design Continuum and MIT Media Lab. I focused on how the urban ecology, the building, the workplace and the
participation of users impact organizational knowledge and innovation in these case studies. My thesis advisors and committee
members were Paul Duguid, Paul Carlile, Frank Duffy and Joe Dumit. The thesis entitled "Spacing Innovation and Learning in Design
Organizations" (pdf~4MB) is available here. I have presented versions of this work at MIT, PWC in NYC and at Chilean consulting firm.
I presented the new directions of my work at the OKLC Conference. I put together a syllabus on these matters that I will be teaching
at the master level at ISUC and maybe elsewhere, sometime soon.
2 Mobile & Wireless Technology in Cities
Prior to arriving to MIT, I conducted the first study of mobile phone use in Chile, that came out of TIC-ISUC, my research group at ISUC
The study received extensive press coverage in tv, newspaper and radio. Within the MIT atmosphere, that research interest turned into
a desire for building meaningful technologies to enhance urban experience. I am struck by the changing relationship between public
spaces, wireless technologies and user practices. Since early 2003, I am involved in History Unwired, an initiative building digital story-
telling and location-aware systems to augment urban exploration in historical cities. Our test bed is the city of Venice. We are working
in partnership with University of Architecture of Venice (IUAV), la Biennale di Venezia, Ericsson Italy and MIT's City Design and
Development group. We will be presenting our work in the New Century Cities conference to be held in January 2005 at MIT.
3 Uses and Design of Political Communication
Since the beggining of my career I have been interested in public affairs. When I was at ISUC, I taught and did research on political
sociology and philosophy, namely issues of social capital, citizenship, identity and the ongoing transformation of public sphere.
With training in the German tradition of sociology and philosophy and an immersion in cultural & media studies at a technology-intense
research university, I was able to develop a research field that might be called " Political Edutaiment", which is the emerging fusion of
entertainment, political knowledge and media education. It comprises the study of news satire media such as The Daily Show, The
Onion, Real Time with Bill Maher, CQC and The Clinic (and many others) as well as several web-based political games, and their effects
on political awareness and participation. I have presented this line of research at MIT3: Media in Transition, at the mass media and
globalization conference in Athens, and at the 54th International Communication Association conference in New Orleans, May 2004.
Along with MIT Political Scientist Nazli Choucri and her GSSD group, we are designing global agenda!, an International Relations
videogame for playing and understanding some of the burning challenges in the new global order. Since this is a complex task, we are
using visualization techniques (GIS), simulation tools and edutainment inspiration. We will be offering an IAP workshop
in January 2005 where we will be teaching, implementing and creating some of these design ideas.
Contact
Information:
crisgh@mit.edu
Last Modified: 12/2004