2 séminaires
- 5 mai matin LISN Paris-Saclay
- 22 mai 14h-16h, Labo DISP, salle Prince Valiant, au RdC du département GI à l’INSA.
Résumé
A number of sources agree on the fact that the environmental impacts of the digital world (ICT) are something we should worry about. Research in computer science focuses on two objectives: Green-ICT consists in improving the performances of individual components (software, hardware, communication infrastructure) in order to reduce their impacts; Green-by-ICT promises to reduce the impacts of other sectors (e.g., logistics, transportation, …) thanks to ICT.
Taken alone, these current approaches are not sufficient. Green-ICT optimizations are often (if not always) synonymous of massive rebound effects. Green-by-ICT is often nothing more than a promise, at least until now, and if it becomes successful later, it might be too late anyway. On the other hand, the various problems due to increasing environmental degradations, or geopolitical matters, are a source of risks and disruptions for the future of ICT. For computer scientists, it would be just as irresponsible not to consider such risks and disruptions today, as it would have been twenty years ago not to be concerned about cybersecurity issues.
When widening the range of futures considered for ICT, we need to consider the following extreme hypothesis: manufacturing new hardware will stop at some point in the future. A wide range of viewpoints might be considered, between global collapse and the (rather optimistic) hypothesis that there exist ways to gracefully deconstruct the digital world and its entanglements with other infrastructures. Studying these “Fading-ICT” scenarios leads to ``pure’’ computer science questions as well as multidisciplinary approaches to such a systemic “undo”.
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