Articles I've read (April)

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Below are articles I read earlier this year, in April, on my sabbatical at UC Irvine. Here is my previous blog post about the articles that I read in March.

During the spring I reviewed papers for a couple of different conferences. I have pondered if and how I would refer to these papers in my blog posts. I have decided to openly refer to papers that were accepted (thereby disclosing the fact that I was one of the reviewers) but be very brief in writing about them. As to papers I reviewed that were not accepted, I will only note which conference they were submitted to and also append a single semi-cryptic keyword as a place-holder (for my own personal use). My hope is to not reveal myself as a reviewer by writing anything that can unequivocally identify me as a specific reviewer (accepted papers) or that can identify me as a reviewer at all (rejected papers).


Batch/week 1 - accepted position papers at the CHI conference sustainability workshop
Comment: I prepared for the workshop by carefully reading all the 14 position papers. I did the same thing last year in preparation for the sustainability workshop at the CHI 2013 conference. I will not comment on these papers since they have not been peer-reviewed and published, but, my two favourite papers the papers by Knowles et. al. and Håkansson. I like the paper I wrote together with two colleagues - it should be further developed at some point. All the position papers are available at the workshop website.

• *Knowles, B., L. Blair, S. Walker. Toward a sustainability lexicon and pattern language?
• Brewer, R. S. Three shifts for sustainable HCI: scalable, sticky, and multidisciplinary.
• Norton, J. Accounting for potentially detrimental unintended impacts in HCI.
• Dillahunt, T. Toward a deeper understanding of sustainability within HCI.
• Remy, C., E. M. Huang. Tailoring sustainable HCI design knowledge to design practice.
• Bendor, R. Designing interactive ethical spectacles for sustainability.
• Prost, S., K. Röderer, J. Schrammel, M. Tscheligi. A networked culture of unsustainability: actor-network theory and activism.
• Lim, V., F. Yalvaç. Household food waste prevention: how to design and evaluate technological interventions?
• Mankoff, J. Resource availability.
• Willamowski, J., Convertino, G. and Grasso, A. Leveraging organizations for sustainable commuting: a field study.
• Eriksson, E., D. Pargman, H. Artman. Usability as a threat to a sustainable future: induced disability through better HCI.
• Håkansson, M. Sustainable HCI: what have we learned?
• Gui, X. Statement.
• Gilbert, A. M and Silberman, M. S. Re-purposed activist as new sustainable HCI researcher (new researcher format).

Batch/week 2 - accepted position papers at the CHI conference design fiction workshop
Comment: I prepared for the second workshop by carefully reading all the 13 position papers. I will again not comment on these papers since they have not been peer-reviewed and published, but, my favourite paper was the paper by Prost et. al. All papers are available at the workshop website.

• Andersen, K. Using Props to Explore Design Futures: Making New Instruments.
• Ganglbauer, E. One day in the future, there will be no food wasted.
• Haldenby, T. and Candy, S. The Age Of Imagination: A History of Experiential Futures 2006-2031.
• Kwon, H. Envisioning Futuristic TUI.
• Martindale, S., Trujillo Pisanty, D. and Durrant, A. Memories of a Future Past: A Design Fiction Exploring New Parenthood.
• Prost, S., Roderer, K., Schrammel, J. and Tscheligi, M. Product Boxes and Worst Nightmares: User-generated Design Fiction.
• Tartaro, A. Alternate Endings in the Classroom.
• Thomas, L., Briggs, P., Van-Zoonen, L. and Turner, G. Fictional Futures and the Premediation of Identity Management.
• Williams, K. Faiths, Futues, & Fictions: A Dispatch from the Field.
• Berzowska, J. Programming Materiality and Society in the Age of Functional Fibers.
• Blythe, M. and Buie, E. Digital Spirits: Report of an Imaginary Workshop on Technologies to Support Religious and Spiritual Experience.
• Moulder, V., Wakkary, R. and Neustadter, C. Ada Lovelace to Babylonia.ca Alternate Endings: Using Fiction to Explore Design Futures Workshop.
• Pargman, D. The Future of News and ICT for Sustainability 2029.

Batch/week 3 - mixed texts but mostly about ICT and sustainability
Comment: There is no clear-cut theme to these texts, but the majority were text I reviewed for conferences (ICT4S, UbiComp).

• Easterbrook, Steve (2014). From computational thinking to systems thinking: A conceptual toolkit for sustainability computing. The 2nd International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S'14), Stockholm, Sweden, Aug 24-27, 2014 (available online). */ I outed myself at CHI 2014 and talked to Steve whom I will meet again later this month at the ICT4S conference. I very much liked the paper but Steve said it will be heavily rewritten and I haven't read the final version. /*
• Alinikula, P, Latikka, Juha-Lasse and Paanajärvi, Jussi (2014). Gaming for good changing the game for corporate sustainability. The 2nd International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S'14), Stockholm, Sweden, Aug 24-27, 2014 (available online). */ A very short paper - less than three full pages long including the pictures. /*
• Paper rejected to the ICT4S 2014 conference. Keyword: "Community participation".
• Paper rejected to the ICT4S 2014 conference. Keyword: "World System Theory". */ I personally leaned towards accepting this paper. /*
• Ekbia, H. and Nardi, B. (2014). Heteromation and its (dis)contents: The invisible division of labor between humans and machines. First Monday, Vol. 19, No.2 (available online). */ I read a draft version of this very interesting article as part of ongoing discussions I had with Bonnie Nardi during the spring. The paper argues that besides technologies of automation (that take humans out of the loop), we now also have technologies of heteromation that bring humans back into the loop - but a loop where the machine (computer) call for help/calls the shots and "outsources" difficult tasks to humans. The paper explores some of the "remarkable social, economic, and ethical implications" of this new paradigm. /*
• Leebaert, D., & Dickinson, T. (1991). A world to understand: technology and the awakening of human possibility. In Technology 2001 (pp. 293-321). MIT Press. */ A great text that I re-read for the n.th time. Asks just the right questions (which is less usual than you might think) and has any number of thoughtful and intriguing conclusions. /*
• Bourgeois, Jacky; van der Linden, Janet; Kortuem, Gerd; Price, Blaine A. and Rimmer, Christopher (forthcoming). Conversations with my washing machine: an in-the-wild study of demand-shifting with self-generated energy. To appear in The ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2014), 13-17 September 2014, Seattle, Washington. */ Flawlessly conducted study. /*

---------- QUOTES ----------

----- On sustainability in Human-Computer Interaction -----

"Sustainable HCI is premised in a set of modernist assumptions which prescribe a limited solution space and a particular strategy for garnering buy-in and enthusiasm. These assumptions are that people are rational, and determine the most beneficial actions to take with respect to their own self-interests.

[...]

These solutions can at best have have an only minor impact towards any measurable sustainability goals, such as carbon emissions reductions; worse, they may reinforce a worldview and a set of values that is incompatible with sustainability and lead to a net negative impact for sustainability.

[...]

Given that these solutions are rooted in as set of assumptions (frames), new frames must be adopted as the foundation for a new “sustainability” discourse in computing. Frames are cognitive narratives about how the world works. Discourse analysis of Sustainable HCI publications reveals three key frames [...] namely Rational Actor, Self-Interest, and Free Market. Unsurprisingly, yet problematically, these three frames comprise the modernist worldview, which has so powerfully shaped academic institutions and norms. This has important implications about how difficult it may be for Sustainable HCI to break out of this thinking.”

Knowles, B., Blair, L. and Walker, S. (2014). 

Towards a sustainability lexicon and pattern language?

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