Li and Moodley say that day is here, and they extol the potential of the ever-expanding technology. “It is modernizing our businesses, cities, transportation systems, energy grids, and agriculture,” they write. “It is also being proposed as the next big thing to confront our most pressing environmental challenges.”
They advocate for much greater research into the potential effects of so much connectivity, including the amount of energy required to manufacture and power all the devices; the way technology shapes peoples’ behaviors and decisions daily; and the trash left behind – known as electronic waste or “e-waste” – when devices are no longer useful.
“With limited empirical research on the environmental costs of [the internet of things], there can be no action taken by businesses, technology developers, or policymakers to ensure the responsible development and deployment of this technology,” Li and Moodley write. The Network for the Digital Economy and Environment, an initiative of the Innovation Lab, “seeks to build a multidisciplinary coalition to produce research that will expand our understanding and encourage actions and policies that harness the benefits of [the internet of things] while mitigating its harms.”
In other words, a lot more research is needed about the environmental effects of these discarded devices before anyone dives into policies to potentially regulate them.
Li wrote several papers related to the environmental impacts of new technologies for the Innovation Lab. These included a bibliographic analysis on artificial intelligence, which entailed combing publicly available publications to extract meaningful patterns, Li said.
“I used a lot of data analysis tools to collect, clean and analyze data, and I was really happy to be able to leverage some of my computer science background and mix that with research and writing experience,” Li said.