A workshop at ICT4S 2024, 24th of June 2024 in Stockholm, SE.
"The True Cost of ICT: From Materiality to Techno-Solutionism" is a workshop to be held at the International ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) conference, on Monday the 24th of June 2024, in Stockholm, Sweden.
During the workshop, we will investigate the long term impacts of green-tech solutions, specifically in ICT, which are avidly promoted by technology companies and supported by governments in the Global North, as a matter of climate injustice. We will work toward understanding the drivers and material dependencies of these technologies, their dependence on semiconductors and identify a research roadmap toward quantifying these effects.
The workshop aims to be an interactive forum where we work towards joint position statements, research outlines, or paper drafts. This collaborative work will be fuelled by short presentations of the participants (cf. Call for Contributions below) and invited speakers but the focus will be on discussion and collaborative work.
In the past few decades, the word technology has become synonymous to digital technology or simply ‘tech’. The tech industry of today generates a variety of gadgets, products and services that proliferates in numbers that is beyond most of our imaginations and determines our lives in ways we do not even realise. However, it is the semiconductor chips, one of most important component in this digital world, that glues together everything tech [1]. The growth of semiconductor technology is unprecedented compared to any other industrial sector, from 2000 components in a semiconductor chip in ‘70s to 50 billion today [2]. The resulting impact in our digital life is so enormous that chips are now compared to air, both invisible and indispensable [3]. This growth is driven by a self-imposed innovation paradigm, by the power of the ICT sector to manufacture a demand for processing capacity that can only be satisfied by another generation of chips, by a framework of regulations and policy that emphasises growth and competitiveness over sufficiency [4], and by an unwavering belief in Moore’s law (i.e., semiconductor chips doubling in capacity every 2 years, no matter what purpose they serve). This enormous ‘progress’ came with the ubiquity and affluence of our digital lives, but also with significant environmental problems (mostly externalised to the Global South) associated to water, energy and material consumption, not only during production [5], but also in its usage [6] and end-of-life as e-Waste related pollution [7].
This unparalleled growth over the last 50 years has created for some an apparent ‘technological utopia’ with such limitless capabilities it is implicated in the solution to major global challenges such as the climate crisis. In contrast, we hypothesise that the never-ending cycle of innovation in digital/semiconductor technologies and the resulting newness is a prime driver of techno-solutionism in our collective imagination. This dangerous narrative, we argue, has an even bigger impact than present day material and carbon footprint of ICT. The well-known rebound effect can also be considered as a consequence of techno-solutionism, where continuous drive to make power efficient ICT infrastructure ultimately results in an increased number of devices with even larger total energy and material consumption.
Techno-Solutionism is the deeply ingrained belief that there are technological solutions to all problems faced by humanity, even where they have originated form our over reliance on technology itself [8, 9]. This is a narrative that is prevalent in the contemporary world, primarily, though not exclusively in the Global North, and has an impact in beliefs and critically policies that permeate our world and its governance. Mainly through technology, it is argued, we could achieve a sustainable utopia, full of economic growth/affluence that does not cause undue harm [10, 11]. While this is an impossible dream, in reality, this optimism actively impedes a more decisive, meaningful and immediate action on climate (or societal) change. The techno-solutionist belief has become increasingly pervasive within the general public and policy makers, particularly as a way to counter climate change [12].
We want to bring a group of like-minded and critical colleagues in understanding the immediate materiality of semiconductor industry and the techno-solutionism it exudes. We will investigate this long term impacts of green-tech solutions avidly promoted by technology companies (and supported by governments in the Global North) as a matter of climate injustice [13, 14]. We aim to critically assess how the ‘progress’ in this industry helps to drive this optimism and increase our reliance on future green technologies (e.g., renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture, geoengineering), while ignoring immediate consequences of climate change and less techno-centric nature based solutions. More specifically, how the immense investment and general utopia around the semiconductor industry, the beating heart of all of modern technologies, is a key ingredient of our reliance on futuristic technological solutions for climate crisis. Within this optimism/solutionism what gets ignored is the externalised cost and harm of these ‘green/renewable’ technologies and the new problems they bring when scaled up [13]. We will work toward understanding the drivers and material dependencies of these technologies, their dependence on semiconductors and identify a research roadmap toward quantifying these effects.
The workshop aims to be an interactive forum where we work towards joint position statements, research outlines, or paper drafts. This collaborative work will be fuelled by short presentations of the participants (cf. Call for Contributions below) and invited speakers but the focus will be on discussion and collaborative work.
In the TCICT workshop, we will investigate the true multidimensional costs of the ICT industry. We ask workshop participants to submit short position statements on topics broadly connects the list below:
Position statements must be written in English and should not exceed one A4 page in length (excluding references). Please submit your statement in PDF format by 2024-05-24 23:59 AoE at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tcict24
If you submit a position statement, we will most likely invite you to present your perspectives in a short presentation (about 15 minutes) during the workshop.
Submitting a position statement is not mandatory for attending the workshop. However, even if you do not intend to submit a full position statement, please consider submitting a few lines about yourself, why you are attending, and what you would like to discuss. You can do this in the “abstract” field under the EasyChair link above.
Before you register for “The True Cost of ICT,” please consider submitting a position statement to our Call for Contributions above. Even if you do not intend to submit a full position statement, please consider submitting a few lines about yourself, why you are attending, and what you would like to discuss.
You can register for “The True Cost of ICT” through the ICT4S 2024 Website. Further information for on-site and online participants will be provided there.
Coming soon!
C. Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. London: Simon & Schuster UK, 2022. ↩
J. McGregor, “The True Nature Of Moore’s Law – Driving Innovation For The Next 50 Years,” Forbes. Accessed: Jul. 01, 2023. Online. ↩
V. Heffernan, “I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory,” Wired, 2023. Accessed: Oct. 25, 2023. Online. ↩
F. Jansen et al., “The Climate Crisis is a Digital Rights Crisis: Exploring the Civil-Society Framing of Two Intersecting Disasters,” in Computing within Limits, Virtual: LIMITS, Jun. 2023. doi. ↩
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C. Freitag, M. Berners-Lee, K. Widdicks, B. Knowles, G. S. Blair, and A. Friday, “The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations,” Patterns, vol. 2, no. 9, Sep. 2021, doi. ↩
D. N. Pellow, “Electronic Waste and Environmental Justice,” in The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology, D. A. Rohlinger and S. Sobieraj, Eds., Oxford University Press, 2022, p. 0. doi. ↩
S. F. Johnston, Techno-Fixers: Origins and Implications of Technological Faith. Montreal Kingston London Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020. ↩
H. S. Saetra, Ed., Technology and Sustainable Development: The Promise and Pitfalls of Techno-Solutionism, 1st edition. Milton Park; New York: Routledge, 2023. ↩
R. Jones, “Marc Andreessen just dropped a ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’ that sees a world of 50 billion people settling other planets,” Fortune. Accessed: Oct. 25, 2023. Online ↩
M. P. Mills, The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. New York: Encounter Books, 2021. ↩
J. Hickel and G. Kallis, “Is Green Growth Possible?,” New Political Economy, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 469–486, 2020, doi. ↩
H. Sanderson, Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green. London: Oneworld Publications, 2022. ↩ ↩2
S. Mitra, A. Ganguli Mitra, and S. Sarkar, “On the need for an anticolonial perspective in engineering education and practice,” Nature Communications, vol. 14, p. 8453. Dec. 2023, doi. ↩