I start by acknowledging the horrific human cost of the Corvid-19 pandemic & the dedication of our underfunded, under resourced healthcare services. My paper today is about digital tech & the environment, & reflects on the structural effects of current isolation 1/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

In the Global West, how we use digital tech in the field of DH reflects the transformative power of tech & its profound impact on (some) societies & communities as well as the environment 2/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Whether that’s DH in data collection, data analysis, or data dissemination, we MUST adjust/ expand to take into consideration all present & future as-yet-unknown, technological, social & political developments that impact our work.
And here we are...

3/20 #DHgoesVIRAL

Pandemic gives us opportunity to reflect on our relationship with tech & environment. Flights halted, pollution clearing & we are linked by the digital to outside world. This is a good time to reflect on our futures, as the digital entwines with our daily lives 4/20 #DHgoesVIRAL

The UN thinks we have 10 years to prevent irreversible climate change. We already see the effects of a climate emergency. From flooding in Indonesia to devastating bushfires in Australia, we cannot escape effects of the Anthropocene 5/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Digital overconsumption has led to ICT driven share of greenhouse gas (GG) emissions increasing by half since 2013. The environmental impacts of digital tech are consistently underestimated: Devices seem small & mobile, infrastructures are often invisible 6/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

This illusion reinforced by Cloud services. Physical reality of use imperceptible. Short lifespan digital kit/streaming/Skype are key drivers of an increase of GG emissions. Leads to underestimating the direct environmental impacts of digital technology 7/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

We need to reflect on the material culture of our digital communications. The production of digital equipment makes it a heavy consumer of metals, some of which are rare &/or critical & reserves are limited. There are MANY ethical issues here 8/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Metals (tin, tantalum, colbalt, gold) come from unstable regions with history of conflict that has produced atrocious human rights violations: violence, rape & slavery. Our digital infrastructures are built on ecological exploitation & human suffering 9/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

The devices we hold in our hands every waking hour are globalised political issues. Digital tech leaves land contaminated with chemicals/waste, from the point of production to points of disposal. Difficult to recycle, leaving tech dead-ends at end-of-life 10/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

UK is 1 of biggest producers of E waste in world. 2016 = 24.9kg per person, 6.1kg elsewhere. 2018, 1.2m tonnes of e-devices sold in the UK, 500,000 tonnes recycled. 500 million tonnes of E-waste from EU every year enter the Asian recycling market 11/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Electricity needs for digital tech & data centres/server farms are often dirty coal-fired energy. In 2020, digital will emit as much CO2 as India in 2015, for all of its 1 billion 300 million inhabitants who mainly consume fossil fuels. 12/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Producing a smartphone weighing 140g = c.700 MJ of primary energy whereas about 85GJ to produce a petrol car weighing 1400kg. It’s necessary to consume 80 x more energy to produce "a gram of smartphone" than to produce "a gram of car" 13/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

The Cloud is not benign. Watching a video online on the Cloud for 10 mins = electricity consumption of 1 smartphone over 10 days. Spending 10 minutes watching an HD video by streaming on phone = using a 2000W electric oven at full power for 5 mins 14/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Cost of an email with a 1MB attachment is 19g of CO2. If we take into account the entirety of the flow of emails in the world, the situation quickly becomes scary. In one hour, more than twelve billion emails are sent, representing more than 4,000 tons of oil 15/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Isolation lockdown means we have a chance to reflect carefully on the deluge of data & proliferation of digital resources, which result in increasing carbon output, e-waste & pollution. Are we taking these considerations seriously enough? 16/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

What can we do to change things in our own sphere of influence in a small section of academia? We can begin by quantifying environmental impacts of the use of technologies in our work. Perhaps in some way that entails breaking our relationships with the machine 17/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Build sustainability into projects; add environmental impacts to our evaluations; talk about the environment whenever we discuss the digital. We can reduce our digital footprint, but this needs us to question the social & economic usefulness of our use of tech 18/20 #DHGoesVIRAL

Isolation offers an opportunity to reflect deeply on our relationship with & between tech & the environment. DH can’t change the world, but we can change our world & move into the future with greater social responsibility. Thank you for listening & stay safe! 19/20 #DHgoesVIRAL

Data in this Twitter paper taken from:

Digital Watch Observatory: https://dig.watch/trends/digital-and-environment

Principles for Digital Development https://digitalprinciples.org 

The Shift Project: https://theshiftproject.org/en/home/ 

20/20 #DHGoesVIRAL