The question of how computing could contribute to a sustainable future or to the transformation needed to get there has been around for at least a couple of decades, to find now a new urgency for a couple of main reasons. First, IPCC reports on climate change are all suggesting that the speed of the process of global warming is close to the worst case scenarios foreseen just years ago, and that has pushed the problem of sustainable socio-ecologies at the top of the social agenda, and sometimes to the political one, with a growth of green social movements at least in the most advanced economies. Second, the widespread adoption of data intensive digital technologies, including digital platforms integrating machine learning, natural language processing, or more in general AI technologies, has relaunched the need to look at the paradoxical characters of digital technologies in relation to sustainability. If through the use of digital technologies some activities can be made more sustainable, e.g. substituting long travels with videoconferencing, the infrastructures and computing power needed to sustain technology use has an environmental cost in itself.
Following on this premise, the course will introduce the students to a diversity of approaches available when thinking about computing projects willing to promote the transition toward sustainable socio-ecologies. More specifically, the course adopts a problem-based learning approach to the issue, involving the doctoral students in selecting – before the lecturing period – a socio-ecological problem they would like to engage with during the lecturing period. During the course, the students will be introduced to how the problem could be addressed from a sustainable interaction design perspective, learning to translate socio-ecological concerns expressed by experts or concerned publics into tools usable in computing projects. For example, classical design tools like personas or scenarios, could be adapted to represent socio-ecological entities or technological functions, or forms of process modelling could be adjusted to include socio-ecological processes. As an exercise in critical thinking and self-awareness, the course will help PhD students in the computing disciplines to critically reflect on their role as professionals, in research and industry.
