[Air-L] CfP: Green Pervasive 2008, Sydney

[Marcus Foth]

Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability
Workshop to be held at the 6th International Conference on Pervasive  
Computing, 2008
May 19-22, Sydney, Australia

http://www.urbaninformatics.net/green/

Environmental sustainability and climate change are issues which must  
no longer be ignored by anyone, any industry or any academic  
community. The pervasive technology, ubiquitous computing and HCI  
community is slowly waking up to these global concerns. The Nobel  
Peace Price 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental  
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “for their efforts to build up and  
disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to  
lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract  
such change”. The citation highlights the urgency of the fact that  
information and awareness around causes and implications are  
necessary but not sufficient to combat climate change. Action is  
required.

The key theme of this workshop around environmental sustainability  
will be addressed threefold:

1. Providing people with environmental data and educational  
information – via mass communications such as film, TV and print and  
new media, or micro communications such as pervasive sensor networks  
(cf. Participatory Urbanism and Ergo at urban-atmospheres.net; real- 
time Rome at senseable.mit.edu; biomapping.net; placeengine.com) –  
may not trigger sufficient motivation to get people to change their  
habits towards a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. This  
workshop seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond  
just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change.
	
2. Pervasiveness can easily turn invasive. It has already caused  
negative consequences in biological settings (e.g., algae in lakes  
and oceans, kudzu vine in the southeastern US, rabbits and cane toads  
in Australia). Pervasive can be a dangerous term when the ecological  
impacts are disregarded. Pervasive technology is no different. In  
order to avoid further serious damage to the environment, this  
workshop aims to lay the foundations to start re-considering the  
impact of pervasive technology from an ecological perspective.
	
3. Addressing the 21st century Digital Divide: The mass uptake of  
pervasive technology brings about digitally networked and augmented  
societies; however, access is still not universal. Castells and  
others use the notion of the ‘digital divide’ to account for those  
whose voices are not heard by this technology. Initially, the divide  
was seen only between the first and third worlds and then between  
urban and rural, but with today’s near ubiquitous coverage, the  
digital divide between humans and the environment needs to be  
addressed. Virtual environments could give the natural world an  
opportunity to ‘speak’. How can we address imbalances? For example,  
sensors embedded in the environment could allow creeks and rivers to  
blog their own pollution levels, local parks can upload images of  
native bird life. Can the process of ‘blogging sensor  
data’ (sensorbase.org) assist us in becoming more aware of the needs  
of nature? How can we avoid the downsides?

We kindly ask prospective participants to submit a position paper  
(2-4 pages total, in English, .doc, .rtf or .pdf file formats)  
related to one of the workshop topics to Marcus Foth at m.foth [AT]  
qut.edu.au by January 25, 2008. Each submission should include a  
short biography stating the author’s background and motivation for  
attending the workshop. Papers will be reviewed by the workshop  
committee and selected on the basis of relevance, originality and  
impact. Accepted position papers will appear in the Pervasive 2008  
Workshops Proceedings. A template will be made available at the  
Pervasive 2008 website. The workshops proceedings will also be  
published online and distributed electronically at the conference (on  
a CD or memory stick). All workshop participants will need to  
register for the conference.

Further information is available at
http://www.urbaninformatics.net/green/

Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology
Christine Satchell, Queensland University of Technology
Eric Paulos, Intel Research Berkeley
Tom Igoe, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the  
Arts, New York
Carlo Ratti, SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT


--
Dr Marcus Foth
Australian Postdoctoral Fellow

Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology (CRICOS No. 00213J)
Creative Industries Precinct, Brisbane QLD 4059, Australia
Phone +61 7 313 x88772 - Fax x88195 - Office Z6-511
m.foth at qut.edu.au - http://www.vrolik.de/publications/