Collapse informatics and practice

Article en anglais qui date de 2013. Les limites de l'informatique sont connues depuis longtemps mais nous n'y prêtons pas attention. Voici quelques extraits intéressants de la publication :

One barrel of oil does an equivalent amount of work to 25,000 hours of human manual labor [McKibben 2010]

Taken together, these sources suggest that collapse could begin within the next several decades. If it does, it is likely to usher in profound changes.
As members of the HCI (Human-computer interaction) community we have a tremendous opportunity to impact the future through digital design aimed at everyday practice.
We propose three steps toward solving this problem. First, expanding the time scale across which the notion of practice is considered will loosen its grip on the present as the natural focal point of analysis. Second, we must work comparatively, across several cases. And third, we highlight the provisionality of our findings and designs, continually monitoring the present to recalibrate notions of the future. Collapse informatics will thus depend on long time horizons during which assessing the present will be critical to visiting the future.
The depth and interestingness of their understandings are possible only because they trace artifacts and practices over time (and space).
it will be important to continually monitor what we study. [...] This approach requires strategic checkpointing over time and collaborative work to synthesize what we will learn across multiple sites. [...] our research must be open to new inputs given the dynamic, unpredictable mix of social, economic, political, and environmental forces that can impact practices of interest to collapse informatics.
We identify two populations of potential interest to collapse informatics : people who believe collapse is imminent and are purposefully devising ways to meet it head on, and people envisioning technological development in ways that we think may fit into a future of collapse.
An example [...] FreedomBox Foundation, [...] coordinates and organizes the activities of global communities working to bring about a future of decentralized communication.
In present times, we have the cognitive surplus [Shirky 2008] to design systems for purposes beyond immediate needs and short-term interests, and we have the excess materials and energy to bring these systems to fruition.
The issues that may be presented in the things we design are no longer just matters of lowering your own carbon footprint, but now include (a) becoming aware of the implications of various energy production choices that best serve the possibility of mitigation of climate change; (b) highlighting local knowledge and abilities to plan for and deal with local effects of climate change; (c) promoting awareness of what is happening globally as a matter of planning for humanitarian responses.
By documenting the details of practices from years past, older adults may be able to provide valuable information about ways of living in the world that are less resource-intensive than current everyday practices.
Conclusion : [... ] First, more work is needed to understand the details of how previous studies of collapse and various collapse scenarios may influence the goals and processes of collapse informatics as a genre of research.
Conclusion : [...] There are many efforts afoot across many disciplines to enable sustainability; however, these efforts are often diametrically opposed to the culture of growth and consumption that pervades industrialized society.