research-article

What pushes back from considering materiality in IT?

Authors:

Batya Friedman,

Deric GruenAuthors Info & Claims

LIMITS '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Computing within Limits

Article No.: 10, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/3232617.3232627

Published: 13 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

There are significant negative impacts from extracting, processing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the materials used to support information technology, as well as of producing the energy it uses, yet these negative impacts receive substantially less attention than discussion of the benefits or technical aspects of IT. This essay presents some ideas on the forces that either de-emphasize or even actively push against considering these impacts. They are grouped into three overarching categories: metaphor and utopian visions, economics, and disciplinary norms and practices of computer science. The essay concludes with some ideas for what might be done to counter these forces and increase the visibility of these impacts when appropriate, suggestions for further investigations, and a framing of these issues as a particular aspect of larger systemic and interlocking environmental, economic, and political problems.

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Cited By

Muntean RHennessy KMills CAntle A(2024)Untangling Cables: A Case Study of the Life & Afterlife of Digital Devices in Academic ResearchProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661540(653-667)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661540
Perovich LTitcomb CHirsch THelmuth BHarteveld C(2023)Sustainable HCI Under Water: Opportunities for Research with Oceans, Coastal Communities, and Marine SystemsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581291(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581291
Scuri SFerreira MJardim Nunes NNisi VMulligan C(2022)Hitting the Triple Bottom LineProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517518(1-19)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517518

Index Terms

What pushes back from considering materiality in IT?
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing industry
      1. Sustainability

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cover image ACM Other conferences

LIMITS '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Computing within Limits

May 2018

95 pages

ISBN:9781450365758

DOI:10.1145/3232617

General Chair:
Steve Easterbrook,
Program Chairs:
Bonnie Nardi,
Jay Chen

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 13 May 2018

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University of Washington

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LIMITS '18

LIMITS '18: Computing within LIMITS

May 13 - 14, 2018

Ontario, Toronto, Canada

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LIMITS '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 17 submissions, 65%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 11 of 17 submissions, 65%

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Cited By

Muntean RHennessy KMills CAntle A(2024)Untangling Cables: A Case Study of the Life & Afterlife of Digital Devices in Academic ResearchProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661540(653-667)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661540
Perovich LTitcomb CHirsch THelmuth BHarteveld C(2023)Sustainable HCI Under Water: Opportunities for Research with Oceans, Coastal Communities, and Marine SystemsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581291(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581291
Scuri SFerreira MJardim Nunes NNisi VMulligan C(2022)Hitting the Triple Bottom LineProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517518(1-19)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517518

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