ABOUT
The Project
What is electronic waste? E-waste conjures images of discarded computers, phones,TVs, hard drives, and endless piles of broken components at the end of their useful life. As a post-consumer object, e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream on the planet and an escalating environmental emergency. The issue of e-waste embodies global and regional inequities between geographies of digital consumption and geographies of digital wasting. Inequities in global flows of e-waste have been documented between high-income nations in the Global North, like the United States, and lower-income nations in the Global South. Inter-regional flows of e-waste also occur between South-to-South nations, which leaves countries like Zimbabwe overburdened with tonnes of toxic digital waste to process.
But the true expanse and diversity of waste generated in the building and maintenance of digital life goes well beyond the unequal movement of post-consumer discards. In fact, recent studies have shown that a majority of the waste and pollution produced during the life of most computing devices comes from resource extraction and manufacturing (Lepawsky, 2017; Gupta et al., 2020).
This exhibit illuminates the vast networks of digital wastes that stretch across varied geographies of extraction, manufacturing, operation, and discard.
E-waste is a transnational problem that must be addressed at all points in computing’s material supply chain. This requires a novel approach that radically reconsiders the production, movement, and disposal of waste throughout the computing ecosystem. Drawing from the emerging field of Discard Studies, this exhibit expands the frame of e-waste from a temporally bound object of discard to instead see e-waste as part of “wider systems of waste and wasting” (Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2018, pp. 2-3). This perspective allows us to see waste not as an inert thing that must be dealt with in isolated locations, but rather as an active, ongoing sociopolitical process in which thresholds of “acceptable” waste are negotiated, often forcibly,
between power, capital, and community. We need new conceptual language to meet computing’s rising ecological challenges. This entails seriously broadening our definition of e-waste, how it is produced, and how it circulates.
ReferencesGupta, U., Kim, Y. G., Lee, S., Tse, J., Lee, H.-H. S., Wei, G.-Y., Brooks, D., & Wu, C.-J. (2020). Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing. arXiv:2011.02839 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02839Lepawsky, J. (2018). Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste. MIT Press.Liboiron, M., Lepawsky, J. (2022). Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power. MIT PressOUR TEAM
Zane Griffin Talley Cooper
Zane Griffin Talley Cooper is a PhD Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and from Fall 2024, he will be an Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Film at St. Lawrence University. His research broadly concerns the intersections and relations between data infrastructures, energy production, and resource extraction in the Arctic. A multimodal scholar with a passion for sustainability, he has held positions at Intel, the Civic Software Foundation, and the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, where, in various capacities, he has explored the nexus of technology and environmental justice. His work has found its way into journals, art exhibits, design projects, film festivals, and he is the Co-Principal Investigator of Geographies of Digital Wasting: Electronic Waste From Mine to Discard and Back Again, a global grant project funded by the Internet Society Foundation. Cooper holds an M.A. in History from California State University San Marcos and a B.F.A. in Film Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Lauren E. Bridges
Lauren E. Bridges is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and from Fall 2024, she will be Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Bridges researches the social and environmental impacts of big data infrastructures, with a focus on “the cloud” and the kinds of surveillance regimes, labor relations, and environmental impacts it makes possible and obscures. She has published in New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and is co-PI a multinational research grant from the Internet Society Foundation (ISOC) that traces the global flows of e-waste throughout the tech supply chain. Bridges received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ingrid Burrington
Ingrid Burrington writes, makes maps, and tells jokes about places, politics, and the weird feelings people have about both. Much of her work focuses on mapping, documenting, and studying the often-overlooked or occluded landscapes of the internet (and the ways in which the entire planet has become, in effect, a “landscape of the internet”). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Popula, e-flux journal, and other outlets. She is also the author of the book Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure. Ingrid has previously taught at Rhode Island School of Design, the Cooper Union, and the School for Poetic Computation. Her work has been supported previously by Eyebeam, Data & Society Research Institute, the Studio for Creative Inquiry, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
Ann Chen
Ann Chen is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher making work that reflects upon environment, ecology, technology, diaspora and colonialism. She is presently a research affiliate at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania where she is studying systems of environmental hazards, waste and wasted labor of the semiconductor industry. This fall (2022), she will be an adjunct professor at NYU Tisch’s Low-Residency MFA in Interactive Media Arts and a resident artist at Culturehub (NYC) working in collaboration on a VR and sound installation about Asian diasporic communities.
Dr. Vusumuzi Maphosa
Dr. Vusumuzi Maphosa is the Information and Communication Technology Department Director at the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. He has published book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentation posters. Vusumuzi is co-PI a multinational research grant from the Internet Society Foundation (ISOC) that focuses on discard challenges affecting the Global South. Vusumuzi’s research covers transformative technological concepts, including ICT4D, educational technology, Industry 4.0, data mining, artificial intelligence, semantic webs and e-governance.
Dr. Margaret Macherera
Dr. Margaret Macherera is a Senior Lecturer at Lupane State University, Zimbabwe. She has published book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations. Margaret has a background in environmental health focusing on how the environment affects human health. She has extensive field experience in Environmental Health, having worked for the Ministry of Health in Zimbabwe for more than 13 years. She holds a PhD in Public Health from the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa and a Master of International Health from the Copenhagen University. Margaret‘s research interest is mainly in issues to do with public heath which includes water sanitation and hygiene, waste management, food safety, One Health and disease control. Margaret has developed several graduate programmes for the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe and also Lupane State University. Currently she is a researcher with a multinational research grant from the Internet Society Foundation (ISOC) that focuses on discard challenges affecting the Global South.
INTERNET SOCIETY ZIMBABWE CHAPTER
Jasper Mangwana
Jasper Mangwana is the chairperson and founder of Zimbabwe Youth in SDGs(ZYSDG), an organization that works in promoting active youth participation in the implementation of the global goals. ZYSDG is the convener of the Zimbabwe National Youth SDGs Summit and has over 165 community chapters and Interest Groups in Zimbabwe.
David Zezai
David Zeil is a doctoral research fellow at the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Centre for Rural Health where he is pursuing a health systems strengthening project in South Africa. He has broad expertise in both quantitative and qualitative research. David holds an MSc degree in Biostatistics & Epidemiology, BSc (Hons) Biological Sciences, various post-graduate diplomas; business administration, project management, and HIV/AIDS management, and an array of certificates in fundamentals of global health research. David has contributed to a number of projects with institutions such as Zimbabwe Youth SDGs, Global health 50/50, World Health Organisation, UNDP, UN Women, National Blood Service Zimbabwe, Internet Society, and Jointed Hands Welfare Organisation. He is also a passionate advocate for sustainable development goals and is optimistic about a gender-just and disease-free society. Through multiple peer reviewed publications, David has made considerable contribution to literature in the public health and electronic waste ecosystems. David is a Co-Investigator of a multinational research grant from the Internet Society Foundation (ISOC) that traces the global flows of e-waste throughout the tech supply chain where he was looking at e-waste discard as it pertains to Low and Middle Income economies with a particular focus on Zimbabwe.