söndag 5 oktober 2014

Articles I've read (June)

Below are the last articles I read earlier this year, in June, on my sabbatical at UC IrvineHere is my previous blog post about the articles that I read back in May. I've been busy after the summer vacation and haven't read any more articles. That means I have finally caught up with writing about articles I've read!

Each asterisk before the name of an article implies that there is a quote further down on this blog post!


Batch/week 1 - mixed papers, mostly critical analyses of new phenomena
Mostly these are papers that have been "thrown at me", thereby constituting an eclectic mix of different topics.
    • Kelly, S., & Nardi, B. (2014). Playing with sustainability: Using video games to simulate futures of scarcity. First Monday, 19(5). */ Using examples from commercial simulation games, post-apocalypse first-person shooters, multiplayer survivor horror games, and historical recreation games, we identify narratives, themes, and game mechanics that would be useful for exploring sustainable practices in possible global future of scarcity." This paper was fun! "The willingness to entertain strong notions of societal decline along with the energizing nature of gaming and its can-do attitude are promising means for designing and thinking through scenarios of possible futures." /*
    • * Irani, L. (2013). The cultural work of microwork. New Media & Society, 1461444813511926. */ "Like "cloud computing" services more generally, AMT [Amazon Mechanical Turk] offered immediate, on-demand provisioning of computational power accessible through computer code. In  this case, however, the computational power was human." "AMT [obscures] workers behind code and spreadsheets." "AMT has allowed canonical AI projects to proceed by simulating AI's promise of computational intelligence with actual people." This article is a great analysis of crowdwork in general and AMT in particular. Is this the future of work? Highly recommended! /*
    • Fabricatore, C. And López, X. (2014). A model to identify affordances for game-based sustainability learning. To be presented at the upcoming 8th European Conference on Games Based Learning  (ECGBL), Berlin. */ "in this paper we present a model for the identification and analysis of game-based sustainability learning affordances. Our model can be used to support he selection of games for educational purposes ... our model was extrapolated through an iterative process of analysis .. of the contents of 30 games." Since we have used a game in our course on sustainability and ICT, I should have liked this paper more than I did. It was unfortunately hard for me to see the practical use I could have of the article. /*
    • Alperovitz, G. (2011). The New-economy movement. The Nation, 13, 20-24. */ "Over the past decade ... a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fuelled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders." Interesting overview and analysis of under-the-radar counter-movements. /*
    • Timberg (2014). Astra Taylor’s radical Internet critique. Salon.com. */ Who would have thought that really thoughtful critique and analysis of the Internet, journalism, surveillance, commercialism etc. would have have come from a documentary filmer who has read up? I had never heard of Asta Taylor before but her book is on my to-buy list now! "So okay, you may not feel like you're being exploited by Facebook ... but value is being extracted from us, value is being extracted from areas of life that were once unprofitable, like conversing with your friends." /*
    • Fry, C. (2014). Jobs and the maker movement: A tale of two economies. An unpublished essay I was recommended to read. */ Treats very interesting questions head-on such as the relationship between 3D printing and the maker movement and the future of capitalism, production and work. The paper is fun to read but very utopian and differs significantly from what I personally believe since it strongly posits (a specific) technology as "the saviour". /*


        Batch/week 2 - mixed papers.
        The papers below cover a range of topics; ICT and sustainability, (ecological) economics and more. Mostly these are papers that have been "thrown at me", thereby constituting an eclectic mix of different topics.
        • Raghavan, B. and Ma, J. (unpublished document). Are we greenwashing green networking? */ much of [the work in "green networking" research] aims to optimize a single metric: the electricity consumption of deployed devices, ignoring other significant environmental costs involved in the manufacture, installation, operation, and disposal of networked systems." Another great paper by Barath Raghavan. It's unpublished but we have discussed some of the ideas in this paper so perhaps part of the line of reasoning presented here will make it into a future paper of mine and Barath's...? /*
        • Hilty, L. M. (2011). Information and Communication Technologies for a more Sustainable World. In Haftor and Mirijamsdotter (eds.), Information and communication technologies, society and human beings: Theory and framework. */ "a reduction of the input of natural resources into industrial production and consumption by a factor of 4-10 is a necessary condition for Sustainable Development. This paper discusses the potential contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to such a dematerialization of the industrial societies" "the global economy will have to learn to produce more quality of life with less input of material and energy." Very good paper. Should have been part of the course literature in the course we are giving right now. /*
        • ** Daly, H. E. (1991). From Empty-World Economics to Full-World Economics–Recognizing an Historical Turning Point in Economic Development. Goodland R, Daly H, El Serafy S, von Droste B (1991) Environmental Sustainable Economic Development: Building on Brundtland. UNESCO, Paris, 29-38. */ It's disappointing that someone who "says it like it is" in such a terse and logical language has not had a greater impact in the 20 years that have passed since this short text was written... "The evolution of the human economy has passed from an era in which manmade capital was the limiting factor in economic development to an ear in which remaining natural capital has become the limiting factor." "The complementary nature of natural and manmade capital is made obvious by asking, what good is a saw mill without a forest? a refinery without petroleum deposits? a fishing boat without populations of fish? ... the limiting factor determining the fish catch is the reproductive capacity of fish populations, not the number of fishing boats" Highly recommended! /*
        • * Daly, H. E. (2005). Economics in a full world. Scientific american, 293(3), 100-107. */ Daly basically says that same thing again, but 15 years later. The message is falling of deaf ears once more. "Properly functioning markets allocate resources efficiently, but they cannot determine the sustainable scale; that can be achieved only by government policy." /*
        • Daly, H. (2011). Growth, debt, and the World Bank. Ecological Economics, 72, 5-8. */ Unveiling problems and contradictions at the very core of the idea of an institution such as the World Bank. "Why, one might ask, would a country borrow money at interest to make policy changes that it could make on its own without any loans, if it thought the policies were good ones? Maybe they did not really favor the policies, and therefore needed a bribe" /*
        • Stokols, D., Lejano, R. P., & Hipp, J. (2013). Enhancing the resilience of human–environment systems: a social–ecological perspective. Ecology and Society, 18(1), 7. */ In this article, we briefly trace the emergence and core themes of social ecology as a basis for understanding and enhancing the quality of people-environemnt relationships". Discusses different kinds of "capital" including economic capital, natural capital, technological capital, human capital, social capital and (new for me) "moral capital". /*
        • ** Sanguinetti, A. (2012). The design of intentional communities: a recycled perspective on sustainable neighborhoods. Behavior and Social Issues, 21, 5-25. */ "[Intentional Communities] and be defined as a deliberate attempt to realize a common, alternative way of life outside mainstream society". An in-depth analysis of intentional communities in relation to B.F. Skinner's 1968 paper "The design of experimental communities". /*
        • Rahm, L. (2014). Dystopia for the Unprepared, Utopia for the Prepared: Why zombies are no promise of monsters. Immediacy. */ "Dystopias and utopias can not be understood without considering who will win and who will lose." "prepping although coloured by a dystopian veiw of the future (and the present), is not primarily characterized by pessimism, but rather by an optimistic belief in the capacity to survive ... real hazards." Interesting paper about the use of and the danger of using the metaphor of a "zombie apocalypse" when thinking about the breakdown of society as this view/metaphor legitimizes individualism and violence. /*

        There's usually a week 3 and sometimes a week 4 but alas, this is what I had time to read before the summer break. As noted above, I have not had the time to read any more articles since June but will pick up that habit again in two weeks when the courses I teach wind down. Not the least since I need to read the 15 articles I should have read this past summer, since we are starting up a new 3-year long research project and I need to read up and since I will give a ph.d. course on ICT and sustainability in the spring (more info on that later).



        ---------- QUOTES ----------

        ----- On "microwork" as the next step in the exploitative regime of a global marketplace for outsourcing work -----

        "In 2006, CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos ... introduced a twist on digital data services. Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) would enable technology builders to farm out massive volumes of small data processing tasks, including transcription, image labeling, pornography categorisation and informational research tasks. ... Like "cloud computing" services more generally, AMT offered immediate, on-demand provisioning of computational power accessible through computer code. In this case, however, the computational power was human.
        ...
        Where AI has fallen short, AMT compensates by construction a new frontier on which the software industry can invest i high-growth startups, intelligent software, and low-risk labor. AMT also helps ameliorate the contradictions of intensified labor hierarchies by obscuring workers behind code and spreadsheets.
        Irani, L. The cultural work of microwork



        ----- On natural resources as limiting factors in today's world -----

        "A standard assumption of neoclassical economics has been that factors of production are highly substitutable. ... consequently the very idea of a limiting factor was pushed into the background.
        ...
        The switch from manmade to natural capital as the limiting factors is ... a function of the increasing scale and impact of the human presence.
...
The complementary nature of natural and manmade capital is made obvious by asking, what good is a saw mill without a forest? a refinery without petroleum deposits? a fishing boat without populations of fish? Beyond some point in the accumulation of manmade capital it is clear that the limiting factor on production will be the remaining natural capital. For example, the limiting factor determining the fish catch is the reproductive capacity of fish populations, not the number of fishing boats; for gasoline the limiting factor is petroleum deposits, not refinery capacity and for many types of wood it is remaining forests, not saw mill capacity."
        Daly, H.E. From Empty-World Economics to Full-World Economics:
        Recognizing an Historical Turning Point in Economic Development

          

        ----- On the long overdue shift from empty-world to full-world economics -----

        "The evolution of the human economy has passed from an era in which manmade capital was the limiting factor in economic development to an era in which remaining natural capital has become the limiting factor.
        ...
        Why has this transformation from a world relatively empty of human beings and manmade capital to a world relatively full of these not been noticed by economists?
...
According to physicist Max Planck, a new scientific paradigm triumphs not by convincing the majority of its opponents, but because its opponents eventually die. There has not yet been time for the empty-world economists to die, and meanwhile they have been cloning themselves faster than they are dying by maintaining tight control over their guild.
        Daly, H.E. From Empty-World Economics to Full-World Economics:
        Recognizing an Historical Turning Point in Economic Development



        ----- On the impossibility of establishing a sustainable economy -----

        "Growth is widely thought to be the panacea for all the major economic ills of the modern world.
        ...
        Relying on growth in this way might be fine if the global economy existed in a void, but it does not. Rather the economy is a subsystem of the finite biosphere that support is.
        ...
        Because establishing and maintaining a sustainable economy entail an enormous change of mind and heart by economists, politicians and voters, one might well be tempted to declare that such project would be impossible. But the alternative to a sustainable economy, an ever growing economy, is biopysically impossible. In choosing between tackling a political impossibility and a biophysical impossibility, I would judge the latter to be the more impossible and take my chances with the former."
        Daly, H.E. Economics in a full world



        ----- On sustainability practices adopted in cohousing communities -----

        "Specific measures frequently taken in cohousing include composting (96%), community managed recycling (94%), low-impact landscaping (84%), edible landscape and/or permaculture (77%), rainwater catchment (51%), outdoor clotheslines (57%), permanently conserved land through a conservation easement (23%), community vegetable garden (91%), community orchard (72%), raising chickens for egg production (40%), convenient bike storage areas (67%), regular carpooling (52%), and car-sharing (33%)."
        Sanguinetti, AThe design of intentional communities: 
        a recycled perspective on sustainable neighborhoods



        ----- On intentional communities -----

        "intentional communities (ICs) ... encompasses a variety of types of cooperative living and defines a growing grassroots movement.
        ...
        IC types include ecovillages, cohousing, urban communities, housing cooperatives, conference and retreat communities, rural homesteading communities, spiritual communities, Christian communities, and income-sharing communes. An empirically established typology ... yielded four types of communities: religious (most withdrawn), ecological, communal, and practical (most integrated)"
        Sanguinetti, AThe design of intentional communities: 
        a recycled perspective on sustainable neighborhoods
        .

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