The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology's climate impacts

Status:: 🟩
Links:: Global energy consumption & carbon emissions of the whole ICT sector

Metadata

Authors:: Pasek, Anne; Vaughan, Hunter; Starosielski, Nicole
Title:: The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology's climate impacts
Publication Title:: "Big Data & Society"
Date:: 2023
URL:: https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231158994
DOI:: 10.1177/20539517231158994

Bibliography

Pasek, A., Vaughan, H., & Starosielski, N. (2023). The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts. Big Data & Society, 10(1), 205395172311589. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231158994

Zotero

Type:: #zotero/journalArticle
Zotero::

Keywords:: [💎]

Relations

Abstract

The climate impacts of the information and communications technology sector—and Big Data especially—is a topic of growing public and industry concern, though attempts to quantify its carbon footprint have produced contradictory results. Some studies argue that information and communications technology's global carbon footprint is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, requiring urgent regulation and sectoral degrowth. Others argue that information and communications technology's growth is largely decoupled from its carbon emissions, and so provides valuable climate solutions and a model for other industries. This article assesses these debates, arguing that, due to data frictions and incommensurate study designs, the question is likely to remain irresolvable at the global scale. We present six methodological factors that drive this impasse: fraught access to industry data, bottom-up vs. top-down assessments, system boundaries, geographic averaging, functional units, and energy efficiencies. In response, we propose an alternative approach that reframes the question in spatial and situated terms: A relational footprinting that demarcates particular relationships between elements—geographic, technical, and social—within broader information and communications technology infrastructures. Illustrating this model with one of the global Internet's most overlooked components—subsea telecommunication cables—we propose that information and communications technology futures would be best charted not only in terms of quantified total energy use, but in specifying the geographical and technical parts of the network that are the least carbon-intensive, and which can therefore provide opportunities for both carbon reductions and a renewed infrastructural politics. In parallel to the politics of (de)growth, we must also consider different network forms.

Notes & Annotations

🟨 Note (last modified: 2023-08-23#09:02:15) (

Paper notes by David Mytton

https://davidmytton.blog/paper-notes-the-world-wide-web-of-carbon/

The main limitation of this proposal is that it is qualitative rather than quantitative. This paper provides no methodology for assessing the environmental impact in any measurable or comparable way. The focus on sub-sea cables is unusual because their impact is described primarily as a social case study of - their actual environmental impact is insignificant. The social impacts are important, but it’s unclear how they are relevant to “climate impacts”.

I find this paper quite strange. It purports to provide a solution to the challenges in assessing the environmental impact of IT, accurately diagnoses the high-level problems, but then completely misses the technical details. Perhaps this is because I’m used to reading scientific papers rather than social “science”, so maybe that isn’t the goal.

📑 Annotations (imported on 2023-06-05#21:50:11)