with consumers could be of value in a new economy. Such simplification is responsive to Tainter’s argument that increasing complexity leads to increasing burdens for systems which at some point they cannot bear. 33 Technologies that provide services while reducing complexity at the same time, square conceptually with what we know from the historical and archaeological record about the relationship between increasing societal complexity and eventual societal decline. This and other efforts at disintermediation3, 36 could help reduce energy and material consumption.

Conclusion

While we do not know for certain what the future holds, scientists from disciplines such as climate science and ecology have made evidence-based predictions about directions the future will likely take if current trends continue. However, what many computing researchers and practitioners do in practice is to assume there is only one possible likely future—that current trajectories of increased growth and consumption will continue. The burden of our message in this article is that science is telling us the kinds of growth we have recently experienced are unsustainable. Consequently, we believe the field of computing should be paying serious attention to futures in which we encounter planetary limits.

LIMITS thinking emphasizes incentivizing long-term returns. It seeks to align its efforts with the scientific disciplines documenting global transformations through climate change and numerous other global effects. LIMITS seeks to explore ways that computing may support long-term well-being. We see significant cause for concern in many science-based projections of the future, and we want to enable our work to be relevant and useful with respect to these potential realities.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank several anonymous reviewers for their cogent comments, as well as the entire LIMITS community for helping shape the ideas in this article. This material is based in part on work supported by the NSF under Grants No. CCF-1442749 and IIS- 0644415.

References

1. Anderson, J. et al. Far far away in Far Rockaway: Responses to risks and impacts during Hurricane Sandy through first-person social media narratives. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, (2016).

2. Aslan, J, Mayers, K., Koomey, J. and France, C.

Electricity intensity of Internet data transmission: Untangling the estimates. J. Industrial Ecology, (2017).

3. Blevis, E. Sustainable interaction design: Invention

& disposal, renewal and reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (2007), ACM, 503–512.

4. Chen, J. Computing within limits and ICTD. In

Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computing within Limits, (2015). ACM.

5. Chen, J. A strategy for limits-aware computing. In

Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Computing within Limits, (2016). ACM.

6. Costanza, R. Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. Columbia University Press, 1992.

7. Daly, H. Steady State Economy. Island Press, 1977.

8. DiSalvo, C, Sengers, P. and Brynjarsdóttir, H. Mapping the landscape of sustainable HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (2010). ACM, 1975–1984.

9. Frase, P. Four Futures. Verso, London, U. K., 2016.

10. Hazas, M. and Nathan, L. (Eds.). Digital Technology and Sustainability: Engaging the Paradox. Routledge, New York, 2018.

11. Hilty, L. M. and Aebischer, B. (Eds.). ICT Innovations for Sustainability. Vol. 310. Springer International Publishing, 2015.

12. Houston, L. and Jackson, S. Caring for the next billion mobile handsets: Opening proprietary closures through the work of repair. In Proceedings of the

8th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, (2016). ACM.

13. Jackson, T. Prosperity without Growth. Routledge, London, U. K., 2017.

14. Jang, E., Johnson, M., Burnell, E. and Heimerl, K.

Unplanned obsolescence: Hardware and software after collapse. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Computing within Limits, (2017). ACM.

15. Masinde, M., Bagula, A. and Muthama, N. The role of ICTs in downscaling and up-scaling integrated weather forecasts for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, (2012). ACM, 122–129.

16. McCloskey, D. Bourgeois Dignity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010.

17. Murugesan, S. Harnessing green IT: Principles and practices. IT Professional 10, 1 (2008), 24–33.

18. O’Neill, D. Measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy. Ecological Economics 84 (2011), 1–11.

19. Palen, L., Starbird, K., Vieweg, S. and Hughes, A.

Twitter-based information distribution during the 2009

Red River Valley flood threat. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 36, 5

(2010), 13–17.

20. Pargman, D. and Raghavan, B. Rethinking sustainability in computing: From buzzword to non-negotiable limits. In Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, (2014).

ACM, 638–647.

21. Patterson, D. 2015. Haitian resiliency: A case study in intermittent infrastructure. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computing Within Limits. ACM, 111–117.

22. Piketty, T. Capital in the 21st Century. Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014.

23. Preist, C., Schien, D. and Blevis, E. Understanding and mitigating the effects of device and cloud service design decisions on the environmental footprint of digit al infrastructure. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

ACM, 1324–1337).

24. Raghavan, B, and Ma, J. Networking in the long emergency. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Green Networking, (2011). ACM, 37–42.

25. Raghavan, B. and Pargman, D. Means and ends in human-computer interaction: Sustainability through disintermediation. In Proceedings of the 2017 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 786–796.

26. Ramchurn, S., Vytelingum, P., Rogers, A. and Jennings,
N. Putting the ‘smarts’ into the smart grid: A grand
challenge for artificial intelligence. Commun. ACM 55,

4 (Apr. 2012), 86–97.

27. Remy, C. and Huang, E. Addressing the obsolescence of end-user devices. In ICT Innovations for Sustainability. Springer, New York, 2014.

28. Rockström, J. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461 (2009), 472–475.

29. Sabie, S., Chen, J., Abouzied, A., Hashim, F., Kahlon, H. and Easterbrook, S. Shelter dynamics in refugee and IDP camps: Customization, permanency, and opportunities. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Computing Within Limits, (2017). ACM, 11–20.

30. Schmitt, P. and Belding, E. Navigating connectivity in reduced infrastructure environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Computing Within Limits. ACM.

31. Silberman, M.S. and Tomlinson, B. Precarious infrastructure and postapocalyptic computing. In

Proceedings of CHI 2010 Workshop on Examining Appropriation, Re-use, and Maintenance for Sustainability.

32. Steffen, W. et al. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347

(2015), 6223.

33. Tainter, J. The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U. K., 1990.

34. Thrun, S. et al. Stanley: The robot that won the DARPA Grand Challenge. J. Field Robotics 23, 9 (2006),

661–692.

35. Tomlinson, B., Six Silberman, M., Patterson, D., Pan, Y., and Blevis, E. Collapse informatics: augmenting the sustainability & ICT4D discourse in HCI. In

Proceedings of the 2012 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM,

655–664.

36. Tomlinson, B., Nardi, B., Patterson, D., Raturi, A., Richardson, D., Saphores, J-D. and Stokols, D.

Toward alternative decentralized infrastructures.

In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development. ACM, 33–40.

37. Vardi, M. The financial meltdown and computing.

Commun. ACM 52, 9 (Sept. 2009), 5.

38. Vitousek, P., Mooney, H., Lubchenco, J. and Melillo, J.

Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems. Science 277

(1997), 494–499.

39. Weiser, M. The computer for the 21st century.

Scientific American 265, 3 (1991), 94–104.

40. Wong, J. Prepare for descent: Interaction design in our new future. In Proceedings of the 2009

CHI Workshop on Defining the Role of HCI in the Challenges of Sustainability.

Bonnie Nardi ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine, USA.

Bill Tomlinson ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, USA, and an adjunct professor in the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Donald J. Patterson ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the Department of Math and Computer Science at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

Jay Chen ( [e-mail]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at NYU Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.

Daniel Pargman ( [e-mail]) is an associate professor in the Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Barath Raghavan ( [e-mail]) is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

Birgit Penzenstadler (Birgit. [e-mail]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Long Beach, USA.

© 2018 ACM 0001-0782/18/10 $15.00