the Big Picture

[david]

using cornstarch cups and Freitag conference bags will help ( a
little ) but I suspect that there are major issues that we need to
address, such as.....

Energy usage in Data centres...BusinessWeek this week has an several
articles about this and other related topics, the data centre one
seems to be a biggie

E-waste...how hardware is designed for obselescence and replacement,
when the design and manufacturing process should take into account
repair, refreshing, recycling and re-purposing, as is increasingly the
case with cars and other products in some European countries

Sustainable manufacturing....there are some very nasty materials and
chemicals used in the manufacture of electronic devices...off-shore
manufacture shifts the problem but doesnt solve it..."Cradle to
cradle" by William McDonough is a good introduction to these issues

IT and sustainability.....ways of visualising and minimising energy
use and environmental impact to alter behaviour

Alternative formats for conferences....the carbon footprint from
moving 2600 people from accross the world to one place is very
significant...satellite mini-conferences, tele-conferencing, blogs,
wikis, google groups are all alternatives to that which can be
developed, although I suspect that better forms have yet to be
developed

Congratulations all on the fformation of this new group, there's a lot
to do

David Weightman SA+D, UIUC

[Jen Mankoff]

Nice list. I'm hoping that asking for introductions will get us
thinking as a group about how we can or already have added to this
list.

jen

[Elisa Giaccardi]

Hi,

I'd like to contribute a brief-history of eco-design written by John
Wood (Reader in Design Futures, Dept. of Design, Goldsmiths Collage)
and published on the Attainable Utopias network with whom I am
collaborating.

John has promoted eco-design for a long time, and educated
generations of students at Goldsmiths on issues of consumption and
sustainability.

I thought that this historical account on eco-design vs. market
forces could be of an interest to this community. The Attainable
Utopias' call for "synergistic communities" relates to the idea of
"community of communities" mentioned by John Thomas.

Elisa

[Elisa Giaccardi]

Hi,

since I have just added my profile to the wiki that Mike nicely set
up for us, and saw that Bill is working on an eco-visualization
project, I thought to share some art-related links on this topic.

Environmental Awareness through Eco-visualization: Combining Art and
Technology to Promote Sustainability / Tiffany Holmes
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/063/holmes.shtml

Tiffany is Chair of the Department of Art and Technology Studies at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This article of her is a
great overview of creative practice of eco-visualization. If you will
be in Washington this summer for CC2007 (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/
CC2007/), you will be able to see her work exhibited at the National
Academy of Sciences.

She also maintains a blog on pro-environmental art and design
projects: http://www.ecoviz.org/

Elisa

[Karen Theisen]

The ecoviz site is awesome! There are some really great ideas there.
Thanks for sharing!

Karen

On May 17, 10:36 pm, Elisa Giaccardi <elisa.giacca...@colorado.edu>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> since I have just added my profile to the wiki that Mike nicely set
> up for us, and saw that Bill is working on an eco-visualization
> project, I thought to share some art-related links on this topic.
>
> Environmental Awareness through Eco-visualization: Combining Art and

> Technology to Promote Sustainability / Tiffany Holmeshttp://reconstruction.eserver.org/063/holmes.shtml