Workshop on Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability

Environmental sustainability and climate change are issues which must no longer be ignored by anyone, any industry or any academic community. The pervasive technology, ubiquitous computing and HCI community is slowly waking up to these global concerns. The key theme of this workshop around environmental sustainability will be addressed threefold: (1) How to go beyond just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change. (2) Pervasiveness can easily turn invasive. We want to start re-considering the impact of pervasive technology from an ecological perspective. (3) Digital divide between humans and the environment: Can the process of ‘blogging sensor data’ assist us in becoming more aware of the needs of nature? How can we avoid the downsides? 1. Theme of the workshop and topics of interest Environmental sustainability and climate change are issues which must no longer be ignored by anyone, any industry or any academic community. The pervasive technology, ubiquitous computing and HCI community is slowly waking up to these global concerns. The Nobel Peace Price 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”. The citation highlights the urgency of the fact that information and awareness around causes and implications are necessary but not sufficient to combat climate change. Action is required. The key theme of this workshop around environmental sustainability will be addressed threefold: 1. Providing people with environmental data and educational information – via mass communications such as film, TV and print and new media, or micro communications such as pervasive sensor networks (cf. Participatory Urbanism and Ergo at urban-atmospheres.net; realtime Rome at senseable.mit.edu; biomapping.net; placeengine.com) – may not trigger sufficient motivation to get people to change their habits towards a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. This workshop seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change. 2. Pervasiveness can easily turn invasive. It has already caused negative consequences in biological settings (e.g., algae in lakes and oceans, kudzu vine in the southeastern US, rabbits and cane toads in Australia). Pervasive can be a dangerous term when the ecological impacts are disregarded. Pervasive technology is no different. In order to avoid further serious damage to the environment, this workshop aims to lay the foundations to start re-considering the impact of pervasive technology from an ecological perspective. 3. Addressing the 21st century Digital Divide: The mass uptake of pervasive technology brings about digitally networked and augmented societies; however, access is still not universal. Castells and others use the notion of the ‘digital divide’ to account for those whose voices are not heard by this technology. Initially, the divide was seen only between the first and third worlds and then between urban and rural, but with today’s near ubiquitous coverage, the digital divide between humans and the environment needs to be addressed. Virtual environments could give the natural world an opportunity to ‘speak’. How can we address imbalances? For example, sensors embedded in the environment could allow creeks and rivers to blog their own pollution levels, local parks can upload images of native bird life. Can the process of ‘blogging sensor data’ (sensorbase.org) assist us in becoming more aware of the needs of nature? How can we avoid the downsides? 2. Topics of interest Topics of interest include but are not limited to: • Transfer persuasive and motivational approaches and experiences from design cases which successfully employ pervasive technology in areas such as games and entertainment, health, and marketing and advertising, e.g., competition, collaboration, rewards, team play, make it fun. • Innovative ways or re-appropriated ways to reduce the impact of computing production (e.g., increase the life cycles of computing devices; re-purpose older computing devices for sensor networks, data logging and other low-performance but increasingly useful tasks; re-think the design of computing devices to allow for more efficient and thorough recycling of components). • Considerations of what ‘pervasive technology’ means from an ecological perspective. • New applications of pervasive computing technology to support environmental education and decision making in formal (school, work) and informal (leisure, play, everyday) settings. • Evaluations and evaluation methods for assessing the impact of pervasive computing devices, applications on the environment. • New interfaces of pervasive computing devices, systems and applications and modes of interactions between people and nature. 3. Format After the introduction of the organisers and the key themes of the workshop, we will do a little icebreaker activity in the form of mini interviews followed by brief informal peer introductions of all participants. We then want to generate a common knowledge base for the workshop on environmental sustainability by collecting information on what we know about the issues at hand, e.g., sources of data on climate change, accessibility and legibility of that data, current impact it has or lack thereof. After morning tea, the workshop breaks into three rotating groups (starting with 1/2/3) according to the three themes: 1. Motivation, 2. Ecological impact, and 3. Digital divide between humans and the environment. After lunch, these groups rotate themes so each group works on each theme: 2/3/1, followed by 3/1/2. Following afternoon tea, we hold a plenary to share results and discuss further steps, plan the Design Challenge 2009, discuss collaboration arrangements beyond the workshop and allocate tasks to volunteers. Design Challenge 2009: Impact! In addition to the conventional academic outcomes, we want to define a number of feasible goals and design a process to bring these goals to fruition within 12 months time and present them at Pervasive 2009. Additionally, we want the workshop to be an opportunity to exchange research insights, expertise and ideas. We also want to leave enough breakout and social time to allow for professional networking opportunities. 4. The organisers Marcus Foth: ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia and 2007 Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, UK. Interests: urban informatics, master-planned communities, social computing, social networks, triple bottom line sustainability, wombats. urbaninformatics.net Christine Satchell: ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow (Industry), Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Interests: HCI, scenario and persona design, young people, digital nomads, mobile technology, puppies. Eric Paulos: Director, Urban Atmospheres, Intel Research Berkeley, USA. Interests: urban computing, social telepresence, robotics, physical computing, interaction design, persuasive technologies, intimate media, sasquach. paulos.net Tom Igoe: Associate Arts Professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York, USA. Interests: physical computing and networking, sensor networks, ecologically sustainable practices in technology development, monkeys. tigoe.net Carlo Ratti: Director, SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT, Boston, USA. Interests: Architecture, sensor networks, real-time data, urban technology, urban planning, crocodiles. senseable.mit. edu 5. A selection of relevant readings CLIMATE RISK. (2007). Towards a High-Bandwidth, Low-Carbon Future: Telecommunicationsbased Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Fairlight: Climate Risk Australia. DARBY, S. (2006). The Effectiveness of Feedback on Energy Consumption (DEFRA report). Oxford, UK: Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. DE YOUNG, R. (2000). Expanding and Evaluating Motives for Environmentally Responsible Behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 509-526. FOGG, B. J. (2003). Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. FOGG, B. J., & ECKLES, D. (2007). Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change. Stanford, CA: Stanford Captology Media. HERRING, H. (1998). Does Energy Efficiency Save Energy: The Implications of accepting the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate. Retrieved Apr 2, 2008, from http://technology.open. ac.uk/eeru/staff/horace/kbpotl.htm MONBIOT, G. (2006). Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. PAULOS, E. , HONICKY, R. J., & HOOKER, B. (2008, in press). Citizen Science: Enabling Participatory Urbanism. In M. FOTH (Ed.), Urban Informatics. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Notes on the Political Image: Pervasive Computing, Modeling Assemblage, and Ecological Governance Abstract: What are the larger opportunities for pervasive computing technologies to monitor and model the intricate assemblages of the natural and artificial environments? Perhaps more importantly, how might such media contribute to or even constitute in a new kind of reflexive governance in the image of the information they produce? We consider what is at stake for such a constitution by locating it in theoretical insights from other contexts. In outlining current and future research directions, we underscore the necessity of environmentally produced information to concretize itself not merely as data for some later, deferred political action, but as a direct political image: an instrumental diagram in its own right. What are the larger opportunities for pervasive computing technologies to monitor and model the intricat