skip to main content
10.1145/2639189.2639228acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesnordichiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Rethinking sustainability in computing: from buzzword to non-negotiable limits

Published:26 October 2014Publication History

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen a flurry of work on sustainable computing and sustainable HCI, but it is unclear whether this body of work adheres to a meaningful definition of sustainability. In this paper, we review four interlocking frameworks that together provide a rigorous foundation for what constitutes sustainability. Each consecutive framework both builds upon and can loosely be seen as a refinement of the previous framework. More specifically, we leverage prominent ecological thinking from outside of computer science to inform what sustainability means in the context of computing. To this end, we re-evaluate some recent results from the field of sustainable HCI and offer thoughts on further research in the field.

References

  1. Allen, R., Allaby, M., Davoll, J., and Lawrence, S. A blueprint for survival. Boston: HM, 1972.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. Baumer, E. P., and Silberman, M. When the implication is not to design (technology). In Proc CHI '11. ACM. 2011, 2271--2274. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. Beniger, J. R. The control revolution: Technological and economic origins of the information society. Harvard University Press, 1986. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Blevis, E. Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. Proc. CHI '07. ACM, 2007. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Blumendorf, M. Building sustainable smart homes. In Proc ICT4S '13. 2013, 190--196.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Borjesson Rivera, M., Gunnarsson-Ostling, U., Henriksson, G., and Katzeff, C. Guidance on Sustainable Social Practices with ICT? A literature review.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Borjesson Rivera, M., Hakansson, C., Svenfelt, A., and Finnveden, G. Including second order effects in environmental assessments of ICT. Environmental Modelling & Software, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  8. Borucke, M., Moore, D., Cranston, G., Gracey, K., Iha, K., Larson, J., Lazarus, E., Morales, J. C., Wackernagel, M., and Galli, A. Accounting for demand and supply of the biosphere's regenerative capacity: The National Footprint Accounts' underlying methodology and framework. Ecological Indicators 24 (2013), 518--533.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  9. Boulding, K. The economics of the coming spaceship earth. In Radical Political Economy, V. D. Lippit, Ed. 1966.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Brundtland, G. Our common future: The world commission on environment and development. Oxford University Press, 1987.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Brynjarsdottir, H., Hakansson, M., Pierce, J., Baumer, E., DiSalvo, C., and Sengers, P. Sustainably unpersuaded: how persuasion narrows our vision of sustainability. In Proc CHI '12. ACM. 2012, 947--956. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Catton, W. R. Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. University of Illinois Press, 1980.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. Coyle, D. The weightless world: strategies for managing the digital economy. MIT Press, 1999. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  14. Daly, H. E. Steady-state economics. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Daly, H. E. Steady-state economics: 2nd edition with new essays. Island Press, 1991.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Dillahunt, T. Toward a deeper understanding of sustainability within HCI. CHI '14 sustainability workshop position paper, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. DiSalvo, C., Sengers, P., and Brynjarsdottir, H. Mapping the landscape of sustainable HCI. In Proc CHI '10. 2010. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Dobson, A. Green Political Thought. 4th edition, 2007.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  19. Dourish, P. Hci and environmental sustainability: the politics of design and the design of politics. In Proc DIS '10. ACM. 2010, 1--10. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Dryzek, J. S., and Schlosberg, D. Debating the Earth: the environmental politics reader. 2nd edition, 2005.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Elkington, J. Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of twenty first century business. Capstone, Mankato, MN, 1997.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. Goodman, E. Three environmental discourses in human-computer interaction. In CHI '09. ACM. 2009, 2535--2544. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Hakansson, M., and Sengers, P. Beyond being green: simple living families and ICT. In Proc CHI '13. ACM. 2013, 2725--2734. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Heinberg, R. What Is Sustainability? The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st century's sustainability crises, 2010.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  25. Hendrickson, C., Horvath, A., Joshi, S., and Lave, L. Economic input-output models for environmental life-cycle assessment. 1998.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Hilty, L. Why energy efficiency is not sufficient: some remarks on Green by IT. In Proc EnviroInfo '12. 2012.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Hilty, L. M. Information technology and sustainability: Essays on the relationship between ICT and sustainable development. BoD-Books on Demand, 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  28. Hirsch, F. Social limits to economic growth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  29. IPCC. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  30. IPCC. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. IPCC. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Working Group III Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  32. Knowles, B. Cyber-sustainability: Towards a sustainable digital future. Lancaster University, UK. Ph. D. thesis, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. Knowles, B., Blair, L., Hazas, M., and Walker, S. Exploring sustainability research in computing: where we are and where we go next. In Proc Ubicomp '13. ACM. 2013, 305--314. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  34. MacKay, D. Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. UIT Cambridge, 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  35. McNeill, J. R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. WW Norton & Company, 2000.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  36. Meadows, D., Meadows, D., and Randers, J. The limits to growth: the 30-year update. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., and Randers, J. The limits to growth: a report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind. 1972.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  38. Odom, W. Mate, we don't need a chip to tell us the soil's dry: opportunities for designing interactive systems to support urban food production. In DIS '10 (2010). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  39. Owen, D. The Conundrum. Penguin, 2011.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  40. Packard, V. The Hidden Persuaders. McKay Company, NY, 1957.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  41. Packard, V. The waste makers. David McKay NY, 1960.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  42. Pargman, D., Walldius, A., and Eriksson, E. HCI in a World of Limitations: Addressing the Social Resilience of Computing. CHI '13 sustainability workshop position paper, 2013.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  43. Pimentel, D., and Pimentel, M. H. E. Food, energy, and society, 3rd edition. CRC Press, 2007.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  44. Quah, D. T. The weightless economy in growth. Business Economist 30 (1999), 40--53.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  45. Raghavan, B., and Hasan, S. Macroscopically sustainable networking: An internet quine. ICSI Technical Report TR-12-010, 2012.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  46. Raghavan, B., and Ma, J. Networking in the long emergency. In Proc SIGCOMM workshop on Green networking (2011). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  47. Robinson, J. Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development. Ecological economics 48, 4 (2004), 369--384.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  48. Sahlins, M. D. Stone age economics. Transaction Publishers, 1972.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  49. Sennett, R. The craftsman. Yale U Press, 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  50. Shrinivasan, Y. B., Jain, M., Seetharam, D. P., Choudhary, A., Huang, E. M., Dillahunt, T., and Mankoff, J. Deep conservation in urban India and its implications for the design of conservation technologies. In Proc CHI13 (2013). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  51. Smith, M. H., Hargroves, K., and Desha, C. Cents and Sustainability: Securing our common future by decoupling economic growth from environmental pressures. Earthscan, 2010.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  52. Svane, O. Energy Efficiency in Hammarby Sjostad, Stockholm through ICT and smarter infrastructure - survey and potentials. In Proc ICT4S '13. 2013.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  53. Tainter, J. A. Social complexity and sustainability. Ecological Complexity 3, 2 (2006), 91--103.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  54. The Global Footprint Network. Ecological footprint atlas 2010. 2010.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  55. Tomlinson, B., Blevis, E., Nardi, B., Patterson, D. J., Silberman, M., and Pan, Y. Collapse informatics and practice: theory, method, and design. ACM TOCHI 20, 4 (2013). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  56. Tomlinson, B., Patterson, D., Pan, Y., Blevis, E., Nardi, B., Norton, J., and LaViola, J. What if sustainability doesn't work out? Interactions 19, 6 (2012), 50--55. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  57. Tomlinson, B., and Silberman, M. The cognitive surplus is made of fossil fuels. First Monday 17, 11 (2012).Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  58. Tomlinson, B., Silberman, M., Patterson, D., Pan, Y., and Blevis, E. Collapse informatics: augmenting the sustainability and ICT4D discourse in HCI. In Proc CHI '12. ACM. 2012, 655--664. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  59. Turner, G. M. A comparison of the limits to growth with 30 years of reality. Global Environmental Change 18, 3 (2008), 397--411.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  60. Wackernagel, M., and Rees, W. E. Our ecological footprint: reducing human impact on the earth. New Society Publishers, 1996.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  61. Wackernagel, M., Schulz, N. B., Deumling, D., Linares, A. C., Jenkins, M., Kapos, V., Monfreda, C., Loh, J., Myers, N., Norgaard, R., et al. Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy. Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences 99, 14 (2002), 9266--9271.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  62. Walker, R. Replacement Therapy. Atlantic Magazine, 2011.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  63. Wilson, E. O. The future of life. Random House, 2002.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  64. Wong, J. Prepare for descent: interaction design in our new future. CHI '09 sustainability workshop position paper (2009).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  65. Woodruff, A., Hasbrouck, J., and Augustin, S. A bright green perspective on sustainable choices. In Proc CHI '08. ACM (2008). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  66. Woolley, M. Choreographing obsolescence-ecodesign: the pleasure/dissatisfaction cycle. In Proc of DPPI '03. ACM (2003), 77--81. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  67. Wyche, S. P., and Murphy, L. L. Powering the cellphone revolution: findings from mobile phone charging trials in off-grid Kenya. In Proc CHI13 (2013). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. Rethinking sustainability in computing: from buzzword to non-negotiable limits

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader