On this same river of the digital, millions flock to binge their favorite television programming, to stream pornography, or enter the sprawling worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or simply to look up the meaning of an obscure word or the location of the nearest COVID-19 testing center. Perhaps they are emails, hastily scrawled on smart devices, or emoji-laden messages exchanged between friends or families.
The following article, excerpted from anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate’s case study “ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage,” takes us into the blinking corridors of data centers that make digital industry possible and makes clear the environmental costs of ubiquitous computing in modern life. Still others examine social, historical, philosophical, legal, and cultural facets that are essential for thinking critically about present-day efforts in computing and data sciences and their roles in the wider world. Some cases focus closely on particular technologies, others on trends across technological platforms. The MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) series features peer-reviewed, freely available cases by topic-area experts that introduce readers to a range of questions about computing, data, and society. Last year, MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing launched a specially commissioned series that aims to address the opportunities and challenges of the computing age.
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