Summary
In this paper, we critique ICT's current and projected climate impacts. Peer-reviewed studies estimate ICT's current share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at 1.8%–2.8% of global GHG emissions; adjusting for truncation of supply chain pathways, we find that this share could actually be between 2.1% and 3.9%. For ICT's future emissions, we explore assumptions underlying analysts' projections to understand the reasons for their variability. All analysts agree that ICT emissions will not reduce without major concerted efforts involving broad political and industrial action. We provide three reasons to believe ICT emissions are going to increase barring intervention and find that not all carbon pledges in the ICT sector are ambitious enough to meet climate targets. We explore the underdevelopment of policy mechanisms for enforcing sector-wide compliance, and contend that, without a global carbon constraint, a new regulatory framework is required to keep the ICT sector's footprint aligned with the Paris Agreement.
Concerns surrounding technology use in society has led to the HCI community creating tools for 'digital wellbeing'. These aim to improve users' relationships with technology, but these positively motivated tools may initiate further negative impacts for users e.g. on their privacy or autonomy. Using Pierce's speculative design concepts of 'foot-in-the-door' technologies and focusing on three common digital wellbeing features (time limits and prompts, social 'do not disturb' modes, app and service blocking), I highlight how these tools are a small step away from being used to manipulate users which could enact slow shifts in users accepting such manipulation. Through this and the discussion, I accentuate that positively motivated designs may not explicitly lead to positive interactions by default. I hope this paper will facilitate speculative design and discussion in the digital wellbeing community, to ensure that our designs continue to mitigate negative impacts from technology now and in the future.
ICT is expected to form 21% of global electricity demand in 2030, and history has shown that efficiency gains in Internet infrastructure aiming to curtail such impacts are far outstripped by the growth in data traffic. We need to reduce demand for Internet connectivity, yet encouraging moderate interactions with digital devices and online services could potentially benefit users. HCI designs have been suggested for moderate interactions and Internet usage, most commonly on smartphones-but it's currently unclear whether these interventions can actually be implemented and tested to understand the user and environmental impacts. In this paper, we review features for understanding and manipulating data traffic in accordance with the stock Android and iOS development libraries to better scope the potential for implementing moderate and sustainable digital experiences. Specifically, we outline the intervention features plausible for Android implementation, and we provide reasoning for why iOS is currently too restrictive. We hope our analysis will break down barriers for researchers interested in this work, or make it easier for them to consider sustainability in their own device or service interventions. We also discuss opportunities for better data traffic consideration in mobile operating systems by 2030. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile devices; • Software and its engineering;
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