Pushing LIMITS

Despite low public awareness, significant social and environmental impacts are associated with computer hardware manufacturing. Particularly, many consumers do not know about conflict minerals, which are used in electronics' components and whose extraction is associated with widespread human rights abuses and environmental destruction. The literature about these minerals focuses on explaining the conflict as well as commenting and describing the legislation and other solutions that have emerged over the years to tackle this issue. This study aims to investigate the public awareness around these topics amongst computing professionals. Through an online survey, the level of familiarity of such professionals with conflict minerals was analyzed, as well as their knowledge about other socio-environmental impacts of the electronics industry. This study unveils the ignorance in the computer science community about this issue and proposes ways in which this gap of knowledge could be filled.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do Computer Scientists Know About Conflict Minerals?

Boluda

Patitsas

McMahan

2021

“…Indeed, the literature on CS education for sustainability predominantly focuses on how to apply computing concepts to climate modelling and sustainable logistics [30,35,72]. This tendency has also been an issue for the LIMITS community [42]. As Elizabeth notes in her reflection, this advantage is easier for a number of reasons: it fits with the existing paradigm, it directly addresses curricular goals, and can motivate students.…”

Section: Elizabethmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LIMITS community, which is concerned with the ecological and social limits of computing, has long recognized the importance of education as a leverage point for improving the sustainability of CS [42], with one paper going so far as to state that "Educational approaches will often be the easiest to implement" [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Materiality Matters in Computing Education: A Duoethnography of Two Digital Logic Educators

Mayhew

Patitsas

2021

Computer science needs to be sustainable, and CS educators have an important role to play in changing the discipline. Recent efforts have emerged to teach CS in ways that apply computing to mitigate climate change, but this alone is insufficient: we must also change what it means to do computing. We use duoethnography to interrogate our practices as CS educators to support the goal of integrating sustainability into CS. Despite being invested in these goals, we each realized that we had been nevertheless reinforcing the cultural norms that underpin the environmental and social damage caused by computing. We found five themes in the qualitative analysis of our reflections: (1) A lack of materiality in CS classes makes it difficult for computer scientists to scrutinize the environmental costs of hardware, (2) The discourse on "greenness" in computing neglects the role of embodied emissions, (3) The lack of context in CS education teaches students to perceive the status quo as "natural", (4) Those who have bought into the dominant ideology of CS can be resistant to innovating CS education, and (5) Materiality helps with teaching computing. We illustrate how changing CS to become more sustainable requires deeper thought than "add sustainability and stir" to the curriculum, and insights toward addressing the root ideology of CS education.

“…Hence, Macy and Johnstone's dimension, "Shift of Consciousness" is notable. Finally, placing technical work-demonstrations, design insights, design methods, etc.-within transition discourse might help better situate computing research and design, a challenge to limits scholarship noted by Kaczmarek et al [33].…”

Section: Transition Discourses and Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Transition Discourse, Food, and Computing within Limits

Hendry¹

2021

The limits workshop series is a transition system, which shapes the work of activists, educators, and researchers. It does so, in part, by the development of language and tools and by catalyzing conversations about reality and possible futures. Given this proposition and drawing on ontologically oriented analysis and design, I explore the transition discourse of eight limits' papers, which consider aspects of food. The papers represent competing views of the future of place and planet. Building on this review, I discuss worldviews and transitions, transitions and time, and I explore how formative and instrumental approaches in computing research can contribute to institutional and cultural adaptation.