Towards (s)low-tech computer science?

thoughts on the place of computer scientists in an upcoming ecological crisis

Naomod Christmas Seminar 2020

Erwan Bousse

University of Nantes − LS2N

Computers are awesome 💻🎉

Important facts
  • Computers allow us to organize society,

  • Computers allow us to do science,

  • Computers make our lives incredibly better,

  • Computers are awesome.

internet objets iot
Even better: computer science is awesome
  • We create more applications, more languages, more methods, more tools!

  • Very interesting, fun and and arguably crucial endeavor.

Computers are resource-consuming monsters 💀

mine
coal plant
waste
  • 4% of greenhouse effect gas come from the digital industry (in 2020),

  • 1.6 billion smartphones are sold every year, and now IoT devices keep arriving,

  • Huge amount of (finite) resources must be mined from the ground

  • Recycling e-waste is an almost impossible task (delegated to poor countries)

  • Building computers require a very sophisticated supply chain.

A look at possible (digital) futures 🌡

overview 1

A look at possible (digital) futures 🌡

overview 2

A look at possible (digital) futures 🌡

overview 3

A look at possible (digital) futures 🌡

overview 4

What about us?

If we consider that research is about "inventing the future"…

which future are we currently inventing?

A look at research in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE)

Excerpts from MODELS 2020 abstracts:

Technological advances enable new kinds of smart environments exhibiting complex behaviors; smart cities are a notable example…
The increasing complexity of embedded systems renders verification of software programs more complex…
Model-Driven Engineering has been proposed to increase the productivity of developing a software system…
  • Our grand noble goal is to "manage complexity" through abstractions…

  • ie. making it easier, faster for engineers to build always more and bigger high-tech systems (eg. autonomous cars, satellites).

Which future do we (computer scientists) dream of?

overview 4

Which future do we (computer scientists) dream of?

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Towards "low-tech" or "slow-tech" computer science? 🌳

In summary, we are directly contributing to "high-tech", which:

  • relies on a world with an extreme abundance of energy and resources,

  • relies on stable internet, stable electricity, stable production of new devices,

  • makes the ecological crisis even worse (pollution, energy use).

Therefore should not we start imagining a "(s)low-tech" world:

  • where we stop making huge amounts of new devices every day?

  • where we are hence compelled to reuse old computers and electronics?

  • where systems function in a very unreliable environment (old machines, little or no internet, unreliable electricity)?

And as scientists, should we not start wondering what research we should be doing for such a future world?

Thank you for your attention 🙂

What do you think?

Disclaimer: this talk was voluntarily provocative, I am no climate expert and cannot predict the future… but I am worried!