As seen in timesonline (via engadget) asus confirmed the release of a cheap double sided e-reader. Would it be an explosion as the netbooks? In the picture it can be seen that it have color screens and in the article is mentioned: Whereas current ebook readers have monochrome screens, the Asus would be full colour. It doesn’t specify which type of screen technology, but if it isn’t e-ink or equivalent it just misses the whole point of an e-reader! Without it it is not comfortable to read a whole 1000 pages book on it, nor sit outside in full sun. I will call this a tablet optimized for web reading, but maybe it’s probably the beginning of hybrid reading devices. Let’s see how it keeps developing.

Information and communications technologies and sustainability are two areas that seems quite unrelated. But it is not so and there is a growing interest in their interplay. As a very interdisciplinary and new area there is still not a consensus on a research field definition nor very defined boundaries between different parts of the research area. I was going to write a longer scientific papers on this, but I found more appropiate to publish it as a short scientific blog post hoping to get more interactive response.

I will present my view on the subject, dividing the current research into three areas, one of them (ICT4D) that is quite established, while the other two are a bit more blurred together. As presented in the graphic below I do believe that there are common ground between these three.

ICT4Development

ICT4D refers to the application of information and communication tools for social and economic development, usually focusing on developing countries. [1]
Some of the topics ICT4D works with:
•    Providing ICT infrastructure in low income countries.
•    Developing digital literacy and closing the digital divide (technological access gap).
•    E-learning, e-health, e-government, e-commerce for developing countries.
•    Increase awareness in social and ethical issues.
ICT4D can be seen as the study of the positive second grade impact of ICT in social and economical sustainability [2].
Interesting literature can be found in: [1, 3, 4]

Green IT
Green IT (or green computing) refers to the quantification and reduction of the ICT equipment environmental impact. It can be defined as the study of reducing the negative first grade impact of ICT in environmental sustainability [2]. Some of the topics included in Green IT are:
•    Virtualization of equipment
•    Materials recycling
•    Design for disassembly
•    Energy management
Interesting literature can be found in: [5 ,6]

ICT For Sustainability

With Information and Communication Technologies for Environmental Sustainability I refer to the research that studies the use of ICT in solving the environmental challenges of sustainability. It focuses on the possibilities, on the positive indirect impacts of ICT in environmental sustainability and the positive structural and behavioral effects [2]. It looks at ecological problems that undermine sustainability such as climate change, eutrophication, biodiversity loss, acidification, water scarcity, air and water pollution.

•  Optimization and savings using computers
•  System changes due to use ICT that reduce energy and material uses
•  Society and behavioral changes due to ICT use

Interesting literature can be found in: [2, 7,8,9,10]

Conclusions

I find it is important to clarify the vocabulary and have a common ground when speaking about a research area. The terms green IT and the work studying the use of ICT for reducing ecological challenges as global warming are usually mixed. Conferences and reports get ambiguous titles, and the different terms are usually part of the discussions. I would like to put my  small contribution and point out my views in the differences between those areas. The focus of green IT in reducing the impact of ICT hardware is in my opinion a needed condition if we are to use ICT as tools for sustainable change. But it is just a part in the broader study of the complex relationship between information technology and sustainability.

References

[1]    United Nations. 2007. GAID Series 1: Foundations of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Edited by Aliye P. Celik. New York.

[2]    Berkhout, F. Hertin J. 2004. De-materialising and re-materialising: digital technologies and the environment. On Futures 36 (2004) 903-920.

[3]    Development divides and digital bridges: why ICT is key for achieving the MDGs (Shoji Nishimoto and Radhika Lal, Commonwealth Finance Ministers Reference Report, 2005.)

[4]    The Case for Technology for Developing Regions. Eric Brewer, Michael Demmer, Bowei Du, Kevin Fall, Melissa Ho, Matthew Kam, Sergiu Nedevschi, Joyojeet Pal, Rabin Patra, and Sonesh Surana. IEEE Computer. Volume 38, Number 6, pp. 25-38, June 2005.

[5]    Haris, J. 2008. Green Computing and Green IT Best Practices on Regulations and Industry Initiatives, Virtualization, Power Management, Materials Recycling and Telecommuting.

[6]    Kuehr, R. Williams, E. (2004). Computers and the Environment – Understanding and Managing their Impacts. Kluwer Academic Publishers & United Nations University. Dordrecht/Boston/London.

[7]    Global e-Sustainability Initiative. (2002). Industry as a partner for sustainable development: Information and communications technology. United Kingdom 2002. ISBN: 92-807-2186-0

[8]    Hilty, L. Arnfalk, P. Erdmann, L. Goodman, J. (2004). The future impact of ICT on environmental sustainability. EU-US Seminar: New technology foresight, forecasting and assessment methods. Seville 13-14 May 2004.

[9]    Fuchs, C. (2006) The implications of new information and communication technologies for sustainability. Springer Science.

[10]    Alekson V. Et al. (2004) Making the net work: Sustainable Development in a Digital Society. Xeris,  ISBN: 9780954621605

The light novel (adapted to anime) Shangri-la presents a dystopical future where the economy market is ruled by the trade of carbon emissions. It plays with concepts as carbon taxes, carbon police corp, turning tokyo into a jungle absorbing carbon, carbon economical speculation… It is set in a high technological world where physical books are banned (cutting trees for storing information.. so last century). It seems that climate change and carbon dioxide reduction are now part of our social imaginaries.

More info // See (legally) online

I’m back at work and getting update with what have happened during the last month I’ve been offline. I’ve found some pretty interesting new projects.

First, two environmental applications of google maps (google maps API must be the single most important generator of web applications with environmental purpose). One comes from a collaboration between google and UNFCC, showing climate change emissions data in a neat way.

Sad to see Sweden and Spain in that awful purple meaning they have increased their emissions instead of reducing.

You can play with the map and the different data sets here.

Via Treehugger  

The second, TapIt, comes from New York, and it is a list of places where it’s possible to refill your bottle with tap water instead of jumping into the closest 7eleven and buying one yet more plastic bottle. (Of course they have an iphone app too!)

Via Treehugger

Then I watch a quite unexpected video from UK’s prime minister Gordon Brown in TED, advocating for the use of ICT as a tool for change. Worth watching (as usually in TED)

Finally, via treehugger too, I found a report from Vodafone about the use of mobile technology with sustainability purposes that I should have to have a deeper look into. And an article about the sustainability potential of cloud computing, that is one of the things we have started to think about too.

Lot’s of things going on, lot’s of energy to start the semester, lot’s of ideas for new research.

It has been almost a year since I started this blog. The first year of my phd studies have gone faster than expected and the time for blogging a bit more scarce than I would have liked it to be. I wrote 47 articles, but I think I have as many as drafts or ideas I know I should have written about.

During this year there where around 1300 visits, which is probably more than I expected specially with the low frequency of writing. So thank you to all that have been here! Please comment if you would like to see some concrete improvement.

Now I’m taking a month break, getting married and enjoying the summer. The blog will be back in August with renewed energy and new posts!

The paper written together with Daniel Spikol at CeLeKT has been accepted at Mobile Human Computer Interaction 2009 in the workshop on Sharing Experiences with Social Mobile Media.

Here is the abstract:

We have a personal relationship with mobile phones, since they are closer to us than any other technological device. They are ubiquitous (60% of the world population owns one), individual, and pervasive through our lifestyle (we have them with us all the time and everywhere). These modern devices are nearly as powerful as personal computers, always connected to Internet and loaded with sensors like GPS and accelerometers. These mobile devices offer the opportunity to persuade users to change attitudes and behaviors towards personal health and environmental issues. For this paper we will focus on the design of a mobile application for reducing in carbon dioxide emissions, using the definition of “Climate Persuasive Services” that can change personal attitudes and behaviors regarding climate change for reducing greenhouse gases emissions. The paper presents design practices that have resulted in a prototype mobile application.

I will post the pdf soon.

The paper I presented at Persuasive 2009 is now available for download as PDF at ACM. Please have a look at it!

Here is the abstract:

ICT has reshaped our society, and with the current accelerating development of technology, and its wider distribution throughout the globe, they will continue doing so even more. These changes in society are important for sustainability. They affect the physical way the society and the environment interact, but they also affect the way people think, learn and behave.

We suggest that the persuasive power of ICT can be oriented towards climate change. For this purpose we define the concept of “climate persuasive services” as ICT applications that change personal attitudes regarding climate change and/or change behavior towards reducing greenhouse gases emissions. We consider mobile phones, pervasive sensors and social media as three key technological drivers for the development of climate persuasion applications.

We have analyzed the use of persuasion principles in existing web and mobile applications forming three clusters: tracking carbon footprints, sharing goals and making green behavior easier. Based on this analysis, we suggest a more planned use of persuasive principles, and propose six different opportunities for improvement.

David Wolman wrote an article in Wired about how we should get rid of physical cash and just use digital money. I have always wondered why we don’t accelerate the dematerialization of the micro-payments. This is happening in places as Japan and Korea, and at a growing rate in african countries where previously ad-hoc mobile banking solutions have become a primer way of economic exchange. In the western countries it seems that we are still attached to our heavy euro coins and thick dollar wads.

From the environmental perspective, using mobile phones, RFID, smart cards.. we could save energy and materials in both production, storage and transportation of money. However a good life cycle analysis would be needed to actually estimate the real savings and see if there is any rebound effect that would be needed to be minimized.

Illustration: Stephen Doyle for Wired

I always mention the possibility of ICT for revealing invisible data as energy, CO2 emissions, environmental impact… to the consumers.

But one risk of ICT is that it works also in the other direction, hiding environmental impacts and processes behind a web façade. One example I experienced recently was when I ordered postcards from Moo (from where I used to get my visit cards sent from London) and I discovered that the package was sent “par air” from New Zealand. For the consumer this process is completely opaque and there was no way for me to know that my postcards would fly half world to arrive in my postbox.

We need to think of ways of minimizing this, how do we provide consumers transparent information about the products they are buying? How do we make people to care of that information?

Amazon has presented a 9.7″ e-reader, an optimal size for reading PDF documents and newspapers / magazines.

Of course, as the smaller Kindle, it cannot be connected to a computer and rely on the wireless network to get the documents. And working in USA only. So I still do not see it as a solution for researchers / professionals.

More on my opinions on the future of reading.