Radar-Actuated Lawnmowing Protective Housing; “The Goon Corner”: Algorithmic Sorting’s Role in Language Mutation 52 views

Culture has been shaped by location for most of human history. Distinct dialects and cultural traditions emerged because people were physically bound to the communities in which they were born. The internet disrupted this process with website-based categorizations: the websites someone visited shaped their identity. My sociotechnical research argues that social media is triggering a third stage in cultural sorting — algorithms are replacing location as the main determinant of one’s community. The algorithm invisibly sorts users into hyper-specific communities without their knowledge. GIFtok — a format defined by its hyper-specific dialect and absurdist undertones — is one of these communities. Its dialect is as insular as any geography has produced — except that it is assembled in weeks rather than generations. Social media algorithms have produced a new audiovisual culture built around niche communities that subsist on shock value and overstimulation. This “slop” is not just nonsense. It represents a shift in how people are constructing culture through social media. Instagram has become an ecosystem where dialects are born from feedback loops between user creativity and algorithmic incentives. New aesthetic grammars emerge and create a sociotechnical system where creators and algorithms co-produce meaning and identity.  Lawnmower-related injuries are the third leading cause of traumatic amputation among children — an estimated 9,000 pediatric injuries are reported annually. Riding lawnmowers are responsible for 76.1% of these injuries. The most common mechanisms of injury include falling off the mower and being run over or struck by a moving mower. The technical portion of my thesis sought to address this problem by developing a mechanism to reduce the risk of injury. Our resulting design was “RALPH” — a radar-actuated blade guard that uses a millimeter-wave radar affixed to the mower deck to detect the presence of any humans or animals within a set proximity. A microcontroller then kills power to the blade and triggers a solenoid-operated rotary latch that releases a spring-driven physical guard — a "guillotine" that encloses the blade housing in milliseconds. It does not require any user input. We designed our prototype to cost no more than one-fifth the retail price of the average riding mower to ensure the technology remains consumer-accessible.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

social media algorithms; language formation; internet culture; lawnmowers; safety mechanisms; instagram; tiktok

School of Engineering and Applied Science B.S. in Mechanical Engineering Technical Advisor: Jason Forman Sociotechnical Advisor: Richard D. Jacques Technical Team Members: Jackson Berry, Jimmy Sejas, Vincent Hu, Averell Stith, David Cuyuch, Mia Bonutti, Cole Smith

English

2026-05-10