Understanding and mitigating the impact of Internet demand in everyday life

Digital devices and online services are increasingly embedded within our everyday lives. The growth in usage of these technologies has implications for environmental sustainability due to the energy demand from the underlying Internet infrastructure (e.g. communication networks, data centres). Energy efficiencies in the infrastructure are important, but they are made inconsequential by the sheer growth in the demand for data. We need to transition users’ Internet-connected practices and adapt HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) design in less demanding and more sustainable directions. Yet it’s not clear what the most data demanding devices and online activities are in users’ lives, and how this demand can be intervened with most effectively through HCI design. In this thesis, the issue of Internet demand is explored—uncovering how it is embedded into digital devices, online services and users’ everyday practices. Specifically, I conduct a series of experiments to understand Internet demand on mobile devices and in the home, involving: a large-scale quantitative analysis of 398 mobile devices; and a mixed-methods study involving month-long home router logging and interviews with 20 participants (nine households). Through these studies, I provide an in-depth understanding of how digital activities in users’ lives augment Internet demand (particularly through the practice of watching), and outline the roles for the HCI community and broader stakeholders (policy makers, businesses) in curtailing this demand. I then juxtapose these formative studies with design workshops involving 13 participants; these discover how we can reduce Internet demand in ways that users may accept or even want. From this, I provide specific design recommendations for the HCI community aiming to alleviate the issue of Internet growth for concerns of sustainability, as well as holistically mitigate the negative impacts that digital devices and online services can create in users’ lives

Planning for the things you can’t plan for:lessons learnt from deployments in the home

In this article, we reflect on lessons learned through our own experience of conducting more than 20 technology deployments in participants' homes within the past two years. We shed light on challenges that we have encountered, offering solutions where applicable to enable researchers who are planning to deploy technology in participants' homes.

Women’s Sense of Belonging in Computer Science Education:The Need for a Collective Response

The gender imbalance in Computing education continues to be concerning, with women hugely underrepresented in the field. Prior research on improving gender equality in the discipline discusses the need to improve women's sense of belonging. However, this has seldom included women's understanding of what a sense of belonging is for them - nor have solutions for fostering belonging been co-created with women. In this paper, we report on the findings of four innovative focus groups with thirteen women, students and staff, in a university Computer Science department - uncovering their experiences of belonging and their proposed solutions to improving it. Through these focus groups, we present the experiences impacting our participants' sense of belonging, alongside our participants' solutions for fostering belonging within Computing. From this, we discuss the need for a collective response to fostering a sense of belonging in Computer Science, specifically through having a collective understanding of the barriers to a sense of belonging, applying a collective of solutions to foster belonging, and taking collective responsibility for improving equality

Digitalisation, energy and data demand:The impact of Internet traffic on overall and peak electricity consumption

Over the last decade, concerns have been raised about increases in the electricity used by information technologies, other consumer electronic devices, data centres, and to a much lesser degree, Internet distribution networks. At the same time, ‘smart’ innovations are widely anticipated to help reduce energy demand across diverse sectors of society. Yet such potential savings, as well as the increasing use of other digital services, are predicated upon continued expansion of digital infrastructures. This paper focuses on the phenomenal growth in Internet traffic, as a trend with important implications for energy demand. It outlines an agenda to better understand how data demand is changing. Drawing on findings from our own research in combination with secondary data analysis, we examine the alignment of peak demand for electricity and data. Peaks in data appear to fall later in the evening, reflecting the use of online entertainment, but this is far from fixed. Overall, the paper argues that a better understanding of how everyday practices are shifting, in concert with the provision and design of online services, could provide a basis for the policies and initiatives needed to mitigate the most problematic projections of Internet energy use

Undesigning the Internet:An exploratory study of reducing everyday Internet connectivity

Internet connectivity is seamlessly integrated into many of our everyday habits and activities. Despite this, previous research has highlighted that our rather excessive Internet use is not sustainable or even always socially beneficial. In this paper, we carried out an exploratory study on how Internet disconnection affects our everyday lives and whether such disconnection is even possible in today’s society. Through daily surveys, we captured what Internet use means for ten participants and how this varies when they are asked to disconnect by default, and re-connect only when their Internet use is deemed as necessary. From our study, we found that our participants could disconnect from the Internet for certain activities (particularly leisure focused), yet they developed adaptations in their lives to address the necessity of their Internet use. We elicit these adaptations into five themes that encompass how the participants did, or did not, use the Internet based on their necessities. Drawing on these five themes, we conclude with ways in which our study can inspire future research surrounding: Internet infrastructure limits; the promotion of slow values; Internet non-use; and the undesign of Internet services

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

The real climate and transformative impact of ICT:A critique of estimates, trends and regulations

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 this share could actually be between 2.1-3.9%. 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 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

The climate impact of ICT:A review of estimates, trends and regulations

In this report, we examine the available evidence regarding ICT's current and projected climate impacts. We examine peer-reviewed studies which estimate ICT's current share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be 1.8-2.8% of global GHG emissions. Our findings indicate that published estimates all underestimate the carbon footprint of ICT, possibly by as much as 25%, by failing to account for all of ICT's supply chains and full lifecycle (i.e. emissions scopes 1, 2 and fully inclusive 3). Adjusting for truncation of supply chain pathways, we estimate that ICT's share of emissions could actually be as high as 2.1-3.9%. There are pronounced differences between available projections of ICT's future emissions. These projections are dependent on underlying assumptions that are sometimes, but not always, made explicit - and we explore these in the report. Whatever assumptions analysts take, they agree that ICT will not reduce its emissions without a major concerted effort involving broad political and industrial action. We provide three reasons to believe ICT emissions are going to increase barring a targeted intervention, and we note that in light of these, it seems risky to assume that ICT will, by default, assist in the attainment of climate targets. Based on our analysis, we find that not all carbon pledges in the ICT sector are ambitious enough to meet climate targets. We explore the underdevelopment of 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 carbon footprint in alignment with the Paris Agreement. We further contend that a global carbon constraint should be viewed as a significant opportunity for the ICT sector, as efficiencies within and enabled by ICT would be even greater enablers of productivity and utility than they are today

Anticipatory Governance in the Technology Sector:Processes, Critiques and Principles for Addressing Grand Challenges in Computing

With growing understanding of negative social and environmental impacts of computing technologies and increasingly urgent calls to mitigate these impacts, the sector now faces thorny questions around whether and how to govern computing technologies. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners across a wide range of disciplines to explore critical perspectives on and solutions to anticipatory governance in the computing sector. We will draw on participants' diverse expertise to develop a practical and ethical governance roadmap that attends to the computing sector's responsibility to mitigate its own contribution to the climate emergency. Having developed strategies within this specific context, we will then produce a set of governance principles that could be useful to mitigate other harms resulting from computing, nominally those pertaining to efforts around responsible AI, data protection, and mis/disinformation