Fad-like Technology Adoption as a Social Action

When technology adoption takes on fad-like characteristics it becomes critical to understand consumer behaviors due to the large swings in demand and expectations for the technology. Companies can see revenues skyrocket, only to fall just as fast without understanding the dynamics of the consumer adoption decision process. A model for fad-like technology adoption is described using the technology adoption lifecycle from Rogers adding the theory of information cascades and adopter thresholds. Adopter behavior in each stage of the lifecycle is described as individualistic or holistic utilizing the theories of Watkins and Durkheim. Adoption of the Apple iPhoneTM is shown to illustrate the application of the model and the individual and holistic social actions of fad-like technology adoption

It Is Smart Only If It Is Sustainable. Environmentally Friendly Business Strategies As A Source Of Creating Bigger Value Pool And Reducing Negative Environmental Impacts

In today’s world, we thrashed about with intensive resource exploitation, increased productivity and increasing returns to scale to make abnormal profits and to form a system that favours the survival and growth of the corporate sector at the cost of environmental degradation. It is only now that the expression, ‘environmental sustainability’, which is to sustain or prolong the environment, became a focal point in today’s corporate social responsibility agendas and reports. But this vagary of the corporate sector to decipher the environmental degradation enigma has not worked due to existing system and outdated strategies. Therefore, this paper calls for reinventing the system by unleashing wave of innovations, crafting new strategies, and having a vision based on transformation. To illustrate my points, I focus on the smartphone industry to unveil its environmental impact at every phase of its life cycle and throughout the supply chain. The environmental impact of the smartphone is evident at the extraction of raw material, manufacturing, distribution and packaging, use, and end of life phases. The key challenge for understanding these impacts is the complexity of the smartphone and its value chain. Smartphone, throughout its life cycle, also plays a huge part in perilous climate change. Deforestation, inefficient mining of metals and ‘rare earths’, air, water and land pollution, use of toxic chemicals, enormous e-waste generation, harmful smelting processes, ineffective companies’ policies and government regulations and irrational consumer behaviours – all are evils associated with smartphones’ entire life cycle. Also, the CO2 emissions for all the phases of the life cycle of the smartphones for the year 2020 are forecasted to be around 390.4 megatons. I think environmental sustainability objectives require complex systems thinking for which we need collaborative effort. In this regard, I have designed what I call a “meta strategy” for “environmental sustainability”. The “meta strategy” not just provides a guiding lens to mitigate smartphones’ environmental impact but it can result in minimizing expenses of the smartphones’ entire life cycle phase by phase, by taking advantage from others’ competencies and creating clusters or partnerships, which in turn creates a larger value pool for every single actor involved. Around 6.1 billion smartphones are expected to be in use by 2020, thus creating an awareness regarding its environmental impact and providing a strategy to mitigate its environmental impact will have a tremendous multiplier effect among users, and a system changing and influential behaviour among manufacturers respectively

Quantifying Device Usefulness -- How Useful is an Obsolete Device?

Obsolete devices add to the rising levels of electronic waste, a major environmental concern, and a contributing factor to climate change. In recent years, device manufacturers have established environmental commitments and launched initiatives such as supporting the recycling of obsolete devices by making more ways available for consumers to safely dispose of their old devices. However, little support is available for individuals who want to continue using legacy or 'end-of-life' devices and few studies have explored the usefulness of these older devices, the barriers to their continued use and the associated user experiences. With a human-computer interaction lens, this paper reflects on device usefulness as a function of utility and usability, and on the barriers to continued device use and app installation. Additionally, the paper contributes insights from a sequel study that extends on prior work evaluating app functionality of a 'vintage' Apple device with new empirical data on app downloadability and functionality for the same device when newly classified as 'obsolete'. A total of 230 apps, comprising the top 10 free App Store apps for each of 23 categories, were assessed for downloadability and functionality on an Apple iPad Mini tablet. Although only 20 apps (8.7%) could be downloaded directly onto the newly obsolete device, 143 apps (62.2%) could be downloaded with the use of a different non-legacy device. Of these 163 downloadable apps, 131 apps (com-prising 57% of all 230 apps and 80.4% of the downloadable apps) successfully installed, opened, and functioned. This was a decrease of only 4.3% in functional apps (of the 230 total apps) compared to the performance of the device when previously classified as 'vintage'.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Teaching smart phone ethics: an interdisciplinary approach

The phenomenal rise of the smartphone, and the rapid diffusion of mobile computing generally, are amongst the most notable developments of recent times in information and communication technologies (ICTs). The smartphone has become a ubiquitous communication tool, evolving into a digital Swiss Army knife, with an ever growing number of functions, from personal communications manager, navigation system, gaming terminal and camera, to payment device, internet access point and all-round digital lifestyle hub. For these reasons, the smartphone represents a prime topic for teaching and thinking about ICT ethics. This paper proposes an inter-disciplinary approach to this task

The Dirty Secret of SSDs: Embodied Carbon

Scalable Solid-State Drives (SSDs) have revolutionized the way we store and access our data across datacenters and handheld devices. Unfortunately, scaling technology can have a significant environmental impact. Across the globe, most semiconductor manufacturing use electricity that is generated from coal and natural gas. For instance, manufacturing a Gigabyte of Flash emits 0.16 Kg CO$_2$ and is a significant fraction of the total carbon emission in the system. We estimate that manufacturing storage devices has resulted in 20 million metric tonnes of CO$_2$ emissions in 2021 alone. To better understand this concern, this paper compares the sustainability trade-offs between Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and SSDs and recommends methodologies to estimate the embodied carbon costs of the storage system. In this paper, we outline four possible strategies to make storage systems sustainable. First, this paper recommends directions that help select the right medium of storage (SSD vs HDD). Second, this paper proposes lifetime extension techniques for SSDs. Third, this paper advocates for effective and efficient recycling and reuse of high-density multi-level cell-based SSDs. Fourth, specifically for hand-held devices, this paper recommends leveraging elasticity in cloud storage.Comment: In the proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Sustainable Computer Systems Design and Implementation (HotCarbon 2022

Renovation or Redevelopment: The Case of Smart Decision-Support in Aging Buildings

In Germany, as in many developed countries, over 60% of buildings were constructed before 1978, where most are in critical condition, requiring either demolition with plans for redevelopment or renovation and rehabilitation. Given the urgency of climate action and relevant sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, more attention must be shifted toward the various sustainability aspects when deciding on a strategy for the renovation or redevelopment of existing buildings. To this end, this study focused on developing a smart decision support framework for aging buildings based on lifecycle sustainability considerations. The framework integrated digital technological advancements, such as building information modeling (BIM), point clouds processing with field information modeling (FIM)®, and structural optimization, together with lifecycle assessment to evaluate and rate the environmental impact of different solutions. Three sustainability aspects, namely, cost, energy consumption, and carbon emissions, were quantitatively evaluated and compared in two scenarios, namely, renovation, and demolition or deconstruction combined with redevelopment. A real building constructed in 1961 was the subject of the experiments to validate the framework. The result outlined the limitations and advantages of each method in terms of economics and sustainability. It was further observed that optimizing the building design with the goal of reducing embodied energy and carbon in compliance with modern energy standards was crucial to improving overall energy performance. This work demonstrated that the BIM-based framework developed to assess the environmental impact of rehabilitation work in aging buildings can provide effective ratings to guide decision-making in real-world projects