April 01, 2018 #talk
This month I will be giving invited talks on computing and the enviroment at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.
December 14, 2017 #publication
Matt Kessler just published a piece on the The Environmental Cost of Internet Porn in the latest issue of the Atlantic. I helped him work out some of the estimates on how much electricity is used by Pornhub to provide online streaming video. The short answer: Vermont.
September 10, 2017 #publication
Rebecca Slayton and I recently edited a special issue on computing and the environment for the journal Information & Culture.
Here is the a brief blurb from our introduction:
In much of the literature on the information society, its defining characteristic is assumed to be its immateriality. That is to say, as our interactions and activities become less dependent on the movement of atoms and more focused on the manipulation of bits, they seem less limited by the constraints of physical reality. But when we look closely at the material underpinnings of the information economy—from the minerals that make up digital devices to the massive amounts of energy and water required to power data centers—it becomes clear that information technologies are firmly grounded in the physical environment. In fact, information technologies continuously shape not only the physical environment but also representations of the relationship between natural and built worlds.
The issue includes three absolutely stellar articles:
Avron, Lisa. “‘Governmentalities’ of Conservation Science at the Advent of Drones: Situating an Emerging Technology.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 52, no. 3 (2017): 362–83. https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2017.0014.
Cohn, Julie. “Data, Power, and Conservation: The Early Turn to Information Technologies to Manage Energy Resources.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 52, no. 3 (2017): 334–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2017.0013.
Lécuyer, Christophe. “From Clean Rooms to Dirty Water: Labor, Semiconductor Firms, and the Struggle over Pollution and Workplace Hazards in Silicon Valley.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 52, no. 3 (2017): 304–33. https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2017.0012.
February 20, 2017 #readings
Here is what I am currently reading. You can find the complete archive here.
Bernstein, A., DeGrasse, B., Grossman, R., Paine, C., & Siegel, L. (1980). Silicon Valley: Paradise or Paradox. In Mexican Women in the United States. Chicano Studies Research Center Publications.
Chiu, H.-M. (2011). The Dark Side of Silicon Island: High-Tech Pollution and the Environmental Movement in Taiwan. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 22(1), 40–57.
Pellow, D. N., & Park, L. S.-H. (2002). The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy. NYU Press.
Matthews, G. (2003). Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century. Stanford University Press.
As you might be able to tell, I am currently interested in questions of labor, gender, and the environment as they play out in Silicon Valley. As the Pellow & Park book reminds us:
Next to the nuclear industry, the largest producer of contaminants in the air, land, and water is the electronics industry. Silicon Valley hosts the highest density of Superfund sites anywhere in the nation and leads the country in the number of temporary workers per capita and in workforce gender inequities.As part of the special issue on computing and the environment for Information & Culture that Rebecca Slayton and I are working on, Christophe Lecuyer has a piece on the toxics movement in late 1970s Silicon Valley that is just stellar. That issue should be out in the late summer/early fall.
February 05, 2017
This past Monday I had the privilege of participating in the workshop series at the UC Davis Center for Science and Innovation Studies. Stephanie Boluk, Patrick Lemieux, and Bill Maurer served as commentators on a paper I circulated on Bitcoin and the Environment, and as a result the paper has been improved significantly. Thanks to Stephanie, Patrick, and Bill (and Gerardo Con Diaz, who organized the event)!
November 21, 2016 #readings
Here is what I am currently reading. You can find the complete archive here.
A major part of my Dirty Bits project involves following the supply chain of materials that make possible virtual goods and digital devices, from their origins in places like Petosi, Bolivia to their eventual disposal in places like Agbogbloshie, Ghana. We can follow this component materials around the globe and across the periodic table, from arsenic to zinc. There is a growing body of literature on specific elements; my task is to pull these individual stories together into a coherent environmental history.
Veronese, K. (2015). Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth. Prometheus Books.
Fletcher, S. (2011). Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy (First Edition edition). Hill and Wang.
Sheller, M. (2014). Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity. The MIT Press.
Robins, N. A. (2011). Mercury, Mining, and Empire the Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Indiana University Press.
Ingulstad, M., Perchard, A., & Storli, E. (2014). Tin and Global Capitalism, 1850-2000: A History of "the Devil’s Metal". Routledge.
