HCI Research and Environmental Sustainability

Print This Paper, Kill A Tree: Environmental Sustainability as a Research Topic for Human-Computer Interaction

Paul Dourish (2009), Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine

ABSTRACT

Many HCI researchers have recently begun to examine the opportunities to use ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. This paper examines the limits upon this work as currently construed. In particular, it argues that the political and cultural contexts of environmental practice must be part of an effective solution. Research on ecological politics and the political economy of environmentalism suggest some new directions for the relationship between sustainability and HCI.

Keywords

Environmental sustainability, environmental justice, political ecology, environmentality, scale, social networks.