I gave a seminar yesterday about my ideas of how internet could be more sustainable, both from an environmental perspective, both also from a personal / society perspective.
In the website sustainableinternet.org you’ll find all the guidelines and the possibility to comment and participate!
Here is the presentation:
Jazz calculator is a flash web site advertising the new eco-fuel VW Passat. It compares its low carbon emissions with the emissions a jazz band generate while playing (breathing generates CO2..). Even if the comparison is quite absurd (that’s the point) I think that its persuasion intent, to show how small the car emissions are, is pretty effective. This idea is quite in line with some of the discussions we’ve had at persuasion, and in line with carbon.to.
The same agency developed a similar idea for the iphone, where your breathing emissions when blowing in the iphone mic were compared with how many km the car could drive emitting the same.
I’m back at work and getting update with what have happened during the last month I’ve been offline. I’ve found some pretty interesting new projects.
First, two environmental applications of google maps (google maps API must be the single most important generator of web applications with environmental purpose). One comes from a collaboration between google and UNFCC, showing climate change emissions data in a neat way.
Sad to see Sweden and Spain in that awful purple meaning they have increased their emissions instead of reducing.
You can play with the map and the different data sets here.
The second, TapIt, comes from New York, and it is a list of places where it’s possible to refill your bottle with tap water instead of jumping into the closest 7eleven and buying one yet more plastic bottle. (Of course they have an iphone app too!)
Then I watch a quite unexpected video from UK’s prime minister Gordon Brown in TED, advocating for the use of ICT as a tool for change. Worth watching (as usually in TED)
Finally, via treehugger too, I found a report from Vodafone about the use of mobile technology with sustainability purposes that I should have to have a deeper look into. And an article about the sustainability potential of cloud computing, that is one of the things we have started to think about too.
Lot’s of things going on, lot’s of energy to start the semester, lot’s of ideas for new research.
In my research I am looking at how internet, mobiles, and new ICTs can be used for making a sustainable society. Social media is one of the key technologies that I see can have (is having) a deep impact. Social media tools are allowing new ways of organizing, of creating content, develop ideas, create change… in a grassroots way, horizontally, but in a huge new scale that was not possible before. A change in scales:
Kiva.org is one of the key examples I always mention. It uses technology to link entrepreneurs in needs of small amounts of money in developing countries with people all over the world that can loan it. It takes the microfinance movement to a new scale, allowing a more personal interaction between entrepreneurs and lenders, and allowing millions of users worldwide to help towards reducing poverty and contributing to a more socialy sustainable society.
Interesting concepts from kiva:
I just loaned to this group in Peru.
And example of optimization enabled by the pervasiveness of mobile phones.
Why having the lights on all night? Why not turning them on just when someone needs them? Some communities in Germany have used different mobile phone based system just for that. Walking home at night? Just call a number and your route will illuminate for a limited time. The system is used also for more concrete applications as illuminating sport areas.
Image from http://www.dial4light.de
Possibilities of using near field communications for that? combination with more simple movement sensors?with route planning? With renting bikes systems? Problems with privacy? Advantages of letting know your position when walking home at night.
A fine example of optimization using ICT.
Picture thanks to Jan Chipchase
One of the applications in my thesis was a “mobile instant guilt killer”, meaning a easy way to offset carbon dioxide emissions on the move. If the mobile phones are aware of our greenhouse gases emissions (following our travel patterns using gps) and they reminds us of our lifestyle excesses, why would they not help us reliving the guilt a bit?
I hadn’t found any such application yet, but today reading Jan Chipchase blog I saw that Nokia has recently released an offsetting application developed together with Climate Care! Jan had used the application for offsetting his travel Kabul – Dubai – Tokyo. In the post he brings up the interesting question that such semi automated application makes so easy to offset your actions that you do not need to reflect about the problem (maybe hindering a needed behavioral change).
A good move from Nokia. I could not install the application on my phone, but I will give it a try soon.
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