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What happens if efforts to achieve sustainability fail? Research in many fields argues that contemporary global industrial civilization will not persist indefinitely in its current form, and may, like many past human societies, eventually collapse. Arguments in environmental studies, anthropology, and other fields indicate that this transformation could begin within the next half-century. While imminent collapse is far from certain, it is prudent to consider now how to develop sociotechnical systems for use in these scenarios. We introduce the notion of collapse informatics—the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity. We sketch the design space of collapse informatics and a variety of example projects. We ask how notions of practice—theorized as collective activity in the “here and now”—can shift to the future since collapse has yet to occur.
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... This would also apply to other energy-constrained situations, such as disaster recovery or off-grid installations in developing countries. (e.g., Tomlinson et al. 2013, Lambert et al. 2015. The authors introduce the concept of "graceful decline." ...
... The authors introduce the concept of "graceful decline." Collapse informatics (a term introduced by Tomlinson et al. 2013) models what I believe is the only truly sustainable model of ICT. It necessitates making do with less electricity and therefore lower bandwidth and intermittent access. ...
... So, guiding the definition of interventions and sociotechnical systems in general in the actual abundance for the subsequent use in a future characterised by scarcity of resources and then informatics and digital dimension. According to HCI and Interaction design studies, researchers should begin exploring how our discipline may help address the problems that would likely arise in such a scenario Tomlinson et al., 2013). ...
... Technology plays a vital role in preparing, responding, and recovering from crises. Existing research in HCI and CSCW has investigated the role and potential effects of information technology in dealing with changes induced by crises (Eriksson and Pargman, 2018;Tomlinson et al., 2013;Massimi et al., 2012;Bica et al., 2019Bica et al., , 2020. For example, Shahid et al. (2020) have examined the social media interactions of people in developing countries during a public health crisis to understand irregularities and challenges faced by individuals. ...
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