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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.

By DDB stockholm

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.

The usability of carbon dioxide information from sustainablecommunications on Vimeo.

Small presentation part of the World Usability Day 2009 activities. Disclaimer: I was sick so I was a bit slow and drowsy.

The food is tagged, in this case a QR code.

The screen at the shop plays a video of the producer telling the story behind the food.

Via Engadget

(Met some of the people working there when at Berkeley last spring)

At greengaged they set up a confession cabin for lightening our environmental souls. I think it is a pretty interesting topic they are pointing out.

Photography by Travis Drever

Info at : Greenengaged.

Together with Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud I participated in the 24h development camp Ecomo09 inLondon. The ideas was to spend 24 hours, from 6.pm to 6.pm developing an application from scratch, in this case with an environmental theme. After some brainstorming sessions we decided to focus on an application to improve transform carbon information between different units.

Hacking at 3.a.m

The result is carbon.to a web application that allows to:

• Transform carbon dioxide information to other units for example km of train.
• Compare different footprints for instance how many apples footprints equal a 4 hours flight
• Use as an API to transform CO2 information and present it in your own service in another unit. For instance: carbon.to/apples?co2=10 gives you back an XML with how many

Screenshot

We will keep in updating the service and we will also try to analyze the impact and what it needs to be improved. Have a look and play around with it!

As seen in timesonline (via engadget) asus confirmed the release of a cheap double sided e-reader. Would it be an explosion as the netbooks? In the picture it can be seen that it have color screens and in the article is mentioned: Whereas current ebook readers have monochrome screens, the Asus would be full colour. It doesn’t specify which type of screen technology, but if it isn’t e-ink or equivalent it just misses the whole point of an e-reader! Without it it is not comfortable to read a whole 1000 pages book on it, nor sit outside in full sun. I will call this a tablet optimized for web reading, but maybe it’s probably the beginning of hybrid reading devices. Let’s see how it keeps developing.

I will present my view on the subject, dividing the current research into three areas, one of them (ICT4D) that is quite established, while the other two are a bit more blurred together. As presented in the graphic below I do believe that there are common ground between these three.

ICT4Development

ICT4D refers to the application of information and communication tools for social and economic development, usually focusing on developing countries. [1]
Some of the topics ICT4D works with:
•    Providing ICT infrastructure in low income countries.
•    Developing digital literacy and closing the digital divide (technological access gap).
•    E-learning, e-health, e-government, e-commerce for developing countries.
•    Increase awareness in social and ethical issues.
ICT4D can be seen as the study of the positive second grade impact of ICT in social and economical sustainability [2].
Interesting literature can be found in: [1, 3, 4]

Green IT
Green IT (or green computing) refers to the quantification and reduction of the ICT equipment environmental impact. It can be defined as the study of reducing the negative first grade impact of ICT in environmental sustainability [2]. Some of the topics included in Green IT are:
•    Virtualization of equipment
•    Materials recycling
•    Design for disassembly
•    Energy management
Interesting literature can be found in: [5 ,6]

ICT For Sustainability

With Information and Communication Technologies for Environmental Sustainability I refer to the research that studies the use of ICT in solving the environmental challenges of sustainability. It focuses on the possibilities, on the positive indirect impacts of ICT in environmental sustainability and the positive structural and behavioral effects [2]. It looks at ecological problems that undermine sustainability such as climate change, eutrophication, biodiversity loss, acidification, water scarcity, air and water pollution.

•  Optimization and savings using computers
•  System changes due to use ICT that reduce energy and material uses
•  Society and behavioral changes due to ICT use

Interesting literature can be found in: [2, 7,8,9,10]

Conclusions

I find it is important to clarify the vocabulary and have a common ground when speaking about a research area. The terms green IT and the work studying the use of ICT for reducing ecological challenges as global warming are usually mixed. Conferences and reports get ambiguous titles, and the different terms are usually part of the discussions. I would like to put my  small contribution and point out my views in the differences between those areas. The focus of green IT in reducing the impact of ICT hardware is in my opinion a needed condition if we are to use ICT as tools for sustainable change. But it is just a part in the broader study of the complex relationship between information technology and sustainability.

References

[1]    United Nations. 2007. GAID Series 1: Foundations of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Edited by Aliye P. Celik. New York.

[2]    Berkhout, F. Hertin J. 2004. De-materialising and re-materialising: digital technologies and the environment. On Futures 36 (2004) 903-920.

[3]    Development divides and digital bridges: why ICT is key for achieving the MDGs (Shoji Nishimoto and Radhika Lal, Commonwealth Finance Ministers Reference Report, 2005.)

[4]    The Case for Technology for Developing Regions. Eric Brewer, Michael Demmer, Bowei Du, Kevin Fall, Melissa Ho, Matthew Kam, Sergiu Nedevschi, Joyojeet Pal, Rabin Patra, and Sonesh Surana. IEEE Computer. Volume 38, Number 6, pp. 25-38, June 2005.

[5]    Haris, J. 2008. Green Computing and Green IT Best Practices on Regulations and Industry Initiatives, Virtualization, Power Management, Materials Recycling and Telecommuting.

[6]    Kuehr, R. Williams, E. (2004). Computers and the Environment – Understanding and Managing their Impacts. Kluwer Academic Publishers & United Nations University. Dordrecht/Boston/London.

[7]    Global e-Sustainability Initiative. (2002). Industry as a partner for sustainable development: Information and communications technology. United Kingdom 2002. ISBN: 92-807-2186-0

[8]    Hilty, L. Arnfalk, P. Erdmann, L. Goodman, J. (2004). The future impact of ICT on environmental sustainability. EU-US Seminar: New technology foresight, forecasting and assessment methods. Seville 13-14 May 2004.

[9]    Fuchs, C. (2006) The implications of new information and communication technologies for sustainability. Springer Science.

[10]    Alekson V. Et al. (2004) Making the net work: Sustainable Development in a Digital Society. Xeris,  ISBN: 9780954621605

The light novel (adapted to anime) Shangri-la presents a dystopical future where the economy market is ruled by the trade of carbon emissions. It plays with concepts as carbon taxes, carbon police corp, turning tokyo into a jungle absorbing carbon, carbon economical speculation… It is set in a high technological world where physical books are banned (cutting trees for storing information.. so last century). It seems that climate change and carbon dioxide reduction are now part of our social imaginaries.

More info // See (legally) online

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.

Via Treehugger  

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!)

Via Treehugger

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.

During this year there where around 1300 visits, which is probably more than I expected specially with the low frequency of writing. So thank you to all that have been here! Please comment if you would like to see some concrete improvement.

Now I’m taking a month break, getting married and enjoying the summer. The blog will be back in August with renewed energy and new posts!