Low Power Web: Legacy Design and the Path to Sustainable Net Futures

Low Power Web: Legacy Design and the Path to Sustainable Net Futures

연구 분야: Strategies

학회: CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

HCI is complicit in the climate crisis, as the systems and services that we design engender unsustainable energy use and waste. HCI has equal potential to find solutions for environmental challenges and script, by design, the behavioral changes needed for sustainable net futures. We explore this dichotomy through the lens of data transmission, examining the energy consumption and environmental impact of web communications. This work begins with a critical revisiting of legacy web design that mines the past for actionable ideas towards sustainable net futures. We query how we can reduce our own net energy consumption, and plot a path to design our low-power website. In addition we speculate on a redesign of the background systems, outlining the practical steps we have taken towards solar, wind, gravity and micro-hydro low-power web hosting solutions.