My thesis in 2-minutes.

In Liz Danzico’s Thesis Presentation class, we had to present an overview of our purpose statement with (gasp!) no slides. The following is a transcript of what I presented to the class and visiting critics:

I’m investigating the environmental effects of our overfed data diets, in particular the disconnect that we as producers and consumers of digital content have with the physical infrastructure of the computing cloud. To frame my hypothesis, I asked the question. “Does demonstrating the correlation of cloud-based computing with carbon dioxide emissions lead to a decrease in digital consumption?”

What I’m talking about is the environmental impact of your data, specifically, the carbon footprint of bytes (KB, MB, GB) which requires infrastructure and energy to transmit and store. These bytes exist in large data centers, some powered in part by renewable resources with energy efficient architecture, while many others receive all their energy from non-renewable resources. Globally, data centers accounted for 1.5% of total electricity use and 2.2% of energy use in the US in 2010. These figures increased 36% (globally) and 56% (US) from 2005; research estimated in 2011 that global electricity use of data centers increased by 19%. 

I’m not the first to look into the environmental effects of cloud-based computing (thankfully). The work of Mike Berners-Lee, author of the Carbon Footprint of Everything, has – without being too esoteric – actually calculated the carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e) of a text message, google search, email, and the worlds data centers, which weigh in at a staggering 130 million tons of CO2e. Google has also calculated the carbon footprint of a search request at 0.2g CO2e. The amount is seemingly small, but with an estimated 200 million to 500 million search queries per day, 1.3 million tons of CO2e are produced per year just from Google searches.

Notwithstanding my explanations of environmental consequences, many people I’ve explained my thesis to claim the issue minute – “a drop of water in a sea of larger issues”. Individually, yes. But on a collective level, we encounter a phenomenon called the rebound effect: as technology allows faster and easier access to a resource, the faster that resource is used. The consequence is a low-carbon interaction resulting in a high-carbon lifestyle simply because we do it more.

More notably is the cloud computing phenomenon. As users, we are comfortable with not knowing the systems that house our data, specifically how much data we actually have amassed, where it is actually physically located, and that the government can access our data regardless of 4th amendment protections. As we produce and consume mass amounts of digital content, it seems that the cloud has become a digital attic for our quickly forgotten information and past interactions.

As the semester progresses, I will be proposing a set of tools and design interventions for the moment of production and consumption of digital content. Goals for my thesis include: conscious production and consumption of digital content, a higher awareness of the environmental effects and societal issues around cloud-based computing, an understanding of the systems behind cloud-based computing and digital content production/creation, and initiate a dialogue around theses topics.

References:

Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Vancouver: Greystone, 2011.

Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D., “Growth in Data Center Electricity Use 2005 to 2010,” Analytics Press, August 1, 2011.

Urs Hölzle, “Powering a Google Search,” Google Blog, January 11, 2009. accessed December 3, 2011. link

Thesis Proposal - Addendum

We access digital content and engage in interpersonal communication through all-in-one electronic devices, e.g. laptop or smart phones, and have little time to ponder the affects this interaction has on information and messages. In pursing a thesis with possible physical artifacts as its outcome, there is an opportunity to shift digital content away from a their current format to new forms of physical mediums. Through a broad study of digital content and methods used to parse received messages, the value and meaning of this information can be imbued through social objects in the home. These social objects or physical signifiers can create instances that bridge a communication gap, promoting triangulation – serendipitous moments brought on by a shared interface.

Thesis Proposal - Information Appliances & New Nows

“Our windows to the digital world have been confined to flat rectangular screens and pixels – ‘painted bits’. But while our visual senses are steeped in the sea of digital information, our bodies remain in the physical world. ‘Tangible bits’ give physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible.” – Hiroshi Ishii, Founder, MIT Tangible Media Group

Dr. Ishii is proposing an exploration in an area of computing foreign to the mainstream use of the personal computer. Through graphical user interfaces (GUI), we access digital information via a desktop or laptop computer as well as mobile device. The narrow framework and office-centered metaphors we are conditioned to reinforce interactions that limit our ability to meaningfully communicate and access information. Currently, however, other methods are being implemented and explored to shift our perspectives from the keyboard and desktop metaphor toward gestural and haptic interfaces.

With the recent implementation of touch screen technology in consumer electronics, gestures allow open up new tangible channels for us to communicate with a computer. However, our hands have become nothing more than giant meathooks [sic], arching down onto a device to simply push a digital representation of a physical button. In many touchscreen interactions, we are simply following instructions to “play”, “delete”, or “reply”. Furthermore, gestural futures typically default to lofty user journey videos or science fiction movies, most notably Minority Report.

As a seemingly faster way to access information, an established set of gestures require recollection of meaning rather than recognition. This impacts the library of gestures that a designer can assume his/her audience possesses, and is reflected in the limited way we interact with our touchscreen devices. Symbolic, gestural languages such as sign language and semaphore provide a platform for rich communication, but as Jun Rekimoto, Director of the Sony Interaction Laboratory, states, gestures, “should be mimetic rather than symbolic”. This means our gestures should be learned through imitation, mimicking the behavior of others. In pursuing newer methods of interactions with computers, there are opportunities for reshaping and repurposing established gestures of interaction – especially those with physical objects.

In the contemporary consumer electronic landscape, affordances have been limited to instructional buttons rather than physical items and tools whose interactions are inherent and self-evident in form. Gestures involved with using these objects include twisting, turning, pulling, pushing, and lifting. Through the study of past forms and rituals, namely in interpersonal communication mediums, juxtapositions with forms and rituals of contemporary communication may lend new insight into physical interfaces that affect perceived speed, value, and experience of sending and receiving messages. In this pursuit, the possibility of discovering what Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne call “alternative nows” – how things could be right now if we had different values – rather than casting some future state.

These “alternative nows” can be represented by an object or series of objects that give a user an analog or physical interface, instead than graphical, to interact and access digital information.The end format will be an ecosystem of Jef Raskin’s “Information Appliances”, computers that are designed for a specific purpose and used only in context. For example, a digital camera is actually a computer that takes pictures, but is perceived as a camera. By utilizing rapid protoyping techniques to test form and interaction with users, a praxis of ideas, based on initial communication research, can be implemented to test the effects of physical, haptic interfaces on the value of data and interpersonal communication.