Human-Computer Interaction against climate change: review of a controversy

Un des moyens par lesquels les Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication peuvent contribuer à faire face au défi du changement climatique est par l’Interaction Homme-Machine. Des travaux de recherche ont déjà été conduits en ce sens depuis deux décennies. La voie empruntée, d’un changement progressif par réduction de la consommation individuelle, est cependant remise en cause sur certains points, ce qui doit amener la communauté à réorienter les prochains travaux de recherche. Cet article assemble les principales critiques issues de la controverse qui animent la communauté et envisage une voie ouverte pour remédier à cette remise en question : un changement radical par de nouvelles pratiques sociales.Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a means for Information and Communication Technologies to help facing the climate-change challenge. Researchers have conducted work on this way for two decades. They followed the track of progressive change through persuasion for individual consumption reduction. This track is however seriously discussed, what leads the community to retarget coming research. This paper reviews the main criticisms of the controversy that takes place in the community, and considers a possible track to overcome the problems: a radical change through new social practices

Self-Obviating Systems and their Application to Sustainability

Most research in computing and information science reinforces the premise that information and communications technology (ICT) can be productively applied even more broadly than it is at present. A recent thread of research in sustainable HCI, however, has focused on the possibility that there are many situations where less ICT, not more, may be desirable. We envision an adaptation of this premise, where the goal is not just to consciously omit or remove ICT systems, but rather to create systems explicitly designed to make themselves superfluous through their use. Such a system—one in which the successful operation of the system in the short term renders it superfluous in the long term—could be called a “self-obviating system”. We present a case study in the sustainable food domain for a context in which self-obviating systems could be useful, and a typology of self-obviating systems that could be relevant to other domains. Self-obviating systems could be an important part of a sustainable future, and could be applied more broadly in ICT design.ye

Shifting the maturity needle of ICT for Sustainability

The ubiquity of ICT means the potential of ICT4S covers a broad range of sustainability topics and application domains. However, ICT4S research can be ill positioned with regard to the complexity of transforming society in such a way that people and environmental ecologies can coexist in a sustainable system. The danger is that ICT4S becomes partitioned into a small subset of sustainability and using a limited set of the levers at our disposal. Grounded in the Mann-Bates maturity scale for sustainability this paper performs an analysis of the ICT4S conference corpus to measure how mature the research is in our field with regard to sustainability. Based on this analysis we identify areas in which the ICT4S community can begin to shift the maturity of research in order to promote sustainable futures. By applying the Transformation Mindset our article demonstrates through a series of illustrative how ICT4S can apply this mindset to shift ICT4S research towards more sustainable trajectories. This is an essential first step in taking stock, highlighting shortcomings and identifying opportunities in ICT for sustainability

Streaming, Multi-Screens and YouTube:The New (Unsustainable) Ways of Watching in the Home

Internet use and online services underpin everyday life, and the resultant energy demand is almost entirely hidden, yet significant and growing: it is anticipated to reach 21% of global electricity demand by 2030 and to eclipse half the greenhouse gas emissions of transportation by 2040. Driving this growth, real-time video streaming (‘watching’) is estimated at around 50% of all peak data traffic. Using a mixed-methods analysis of the use of 66 devices (e.g. smart TVs, tablets) across 20 participants in 9 households, we reveal the online activity of domestic watching and provide a detailed exploration of video-on-demand activities. We identify new ways in which watching is transitioning in more rather than less data demanding directions; and explore the role HCI may play in reducing this growing data demand. We further highlight implications for key HCI and societal stakeholders (policy makers, service providers, network engineers) to tackle this important issue

ICT under constraint: exposing tensions in collaboratively prioritising ICT innovation for climate targets

The international treaty known as the Paris Agreement requires global greenhouse gas emissions to decrease at a pace that will limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Given the pressure on all sectors to reduce their emissions to meet this target, the ICT sector must begin to explore how to innovate under constraint for the first time. This could mean facing the unprecedented dilemma of having to choose between innovations, in which case the community will need to develop processes for making collective decisions regarding which innovations are most deserving of their carbon costs. In this paper, we expose tensions in collaboratively prioritising ICT innovation under constraints, and discuss the considerations and approaches the ICT sector may require to make such decisions effectively across the sector. This opens up a new area of research where we envision HCI expertise can inform and resolve such tensions for values-based and target-led ICT innovation towards a sustainable future