Computing within LimitsShow others and affiliations
2018 (English)In: Communications of the ACM, ISSN 0001-0782, E-ISSN 1557-7317, Vol. 61, no 10, p. 86-93Article, review/survey (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
COMPUTING RESEARCHERS AND practitioners are often seen as inventing the future. As such, we are implicitly also in the business of predicting the future. We plot trajectories for the future in the problems we select, the assumptions we make about technology and societal trends, and the ways we evaluate research. However, a great deal of computing research focuses on one particular type of future, one very much like the present, only more so. This vision of the future assumes that current trajectories of ever-increasing production and consumption will continue. This focus is perhaps not surprising, since computing machinery as we know it has existed for only 80 years, in a period of remarkable industrial and technological expansion. But humanity is rapidly approaching, or has already exceeded, a variety of planet-scale limits related to the global climate system, fossil fuels, raw materials, and biocapacity. (28,32,38) It is understandable that in computing we would not focus on limits. While planetary limits are obvious in areas such as extractive capacity in mining or fishing,
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2018. Vol. 61, no 10, p. 86-93
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-237118DOI: 10.1145/3183582ISI: 000446173900022Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85051061861OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-237118DiVA, id: diva2:1259620
Projects
MID4S
Note
QC 201812030
2018-10-302018-10-302025-05-05Bibliographically approved