Breaking the Cornucopian Paradigm

Abstract

The Internet and digital devices are increasingly embedded in our everyday lives. The hidden environmental impacts of this infrastructure are substantial and quietly growing at an increasing rate. Our collective Internet use is following a 'Cornucopian paradigm', which is unsustainable. And yet, while intentionally limiting our online connectivity might be seen negatively as a retrograde step, in this paper, we offer ways in which users might welcome attempts to moderate their Internet use through improving four aspects of our digitally-mediated lives: relationships, digital wellbeing, productivity at work, and online privacy. Given these areas, we discuss how our research agenda may realistically be facilitated and what challenges we may face in moving from the reinforcement of 'business as usual' trends. By investigating and developing user-centred, moderate Internet use, we can 'break' the Cornucopian paradigm.

The Everyday Experience of Connectivity Limits – Insights from French Students during the Covid Pandemic

“…It seems that in the long run, this lack of actionable insights may have led to the switch to 4G, which removes a level of intermediation (routers and local networks). This may be especially the case as limits are increasingly becoming hard to negotiate in everyday situations, as Widdicks et al have recently noted [37]. Nonetheless we see interesting opportunities in the will to set-up a better digital hygiene, which is also in line with past work on slow computing [19].…”

“…Through these different problematic situations, the challenge of understanding networking issues surfaced quickly, and became an important theme. But the acceptability of limits, and the ability to negotiate connectivity was much less straightforward (echoing [37]). It also became clear that connectivity issues where challenging and had to be circumvented, gradually leading to more individualized connections with students often switching to 4G in case of problems.…”

Reducing the Negative Environmental Impact of Consumerization of IT: An Individual-Level Approach

“…However, Loock et al [17] state that studies at the individual level are also important because individual behaviors on a wide scale also have a considerable impact on the quality of the environment. Although individual-level technical steps such as human-computer-interaction designs [18,19] and gamification techniques [20] have been investigated, non-technical self-regulated and non-self-regulated interventions in reducing internet pollution have been not studied [21]. Hence, this study aims to fill that gap by aiming to identify the effect motivation and price interventions have on individuals' willingness to reduce internet usage.…”

A User-Centered Lens into Digital Excess: Exploring the Superfluity and Environmental Burden of the Digital World

“…We echo the critique voiced by research agendas like ICT for Sustainability (e.g., [7]), Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI; also Sustainable Interaction Design) (e.g., [25]), and Computing within Limits (e.g., [16,24,32]) and insist on recognizing the latent environmental burden and the material conditions of the digital world itself. We agree that, in addition to pursuing sustainability through digitalization, analysis of environmental sustainability of the digital is also necessary.…”