Title:  Internet services, energy demand and everyday life

Abstract:  Over the last decade, the growth in data traffic across the Internet has been dramatic, and forecasts predict a similar ongoing pattern. Since this is associated with remarkable electricity consumption (about 10% globally, and rising), such a trend is significant to efforts to reduce carbon emissions.  This calls for careful attention to the nature of these trends, as levels of Internet electricity demand become ever more directly and explicitly problematic.  Based on a host of prior literature and two field studies, this talk explores what we know about the energy intensity of digital stuff, and the growth of Internet traffic.  It considers how such traffic can be attributed to different Internet services like video streaming or social networking, and how these link to everyday practices which draw upon and generate data online.

Biography:  Dr Mike Hazas is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University, who works at the confluence of human-computer interaction and social science. His research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand everyday practices and technologies, how they can be related to carbon emissions and energy demand, and more sustainable trajectories. Mike co-directs the multidisciplinary Socio-Digital Sustainability group at Lancaster, and has served as a chair of the CHI Specific Application Areas subcommittee for the last three years.  Mike is a co-investigator in the DEMAND Centre (EPSRC, 2013-2018) which is concerned with the relationship of social practices and energy demand.