As 'we' become increasingly immersed in life online, the material reality of toxic harms to our lives and landscapes remains hidden from view. While the digital has always been inextricable from the material, the point of ‘rematerialising’ is to bring to critical attention the environmental and social burdens of our everyday, digitally-dependent lives.
With this in mind, on 8 February 2023, IASH Fellow Dr Dipali Mathur in collaboration with former IASH Fellow Dr Mark Paterson organized a panel discussion on Re-materialising the Digital: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Actions, Challenges and Possible Futures. The cross-disciplinary panel of experts considered potential critical approaches, policy implications, and practical solutions to the problems of wastes, toxicity and pollution generated by our digital landscape.
Dr Robert Porter (Ulster University) shared his views on why it is difficult to think about the ‘dirtiness’ of the digital. Dr Dipali Mathur’s (University of Edinburgh) presentation made an argument for the need to re-think the popular narrativization of the ‘e-waste problem’ as a political problem. Following this, Professor Michelle Keown's (University of Edinburgh) paper explored the deadly nexus between electronic and radioactive waste with reference to the longer durée of Cold War legacies in the Marshall Islands. Professor Sean Smith’s (University of Edinburgh) paper explored the opportunities of designing for disassembly in our future infrastructure enabling better circular economy outcomes and higher material recovery at the end of asset life. Dr Mark Paterson (University of Pittsburgh) then took us “behind the screens” to the warehouses, data centers and physical computing infrastructure that are transforming the physical landscape. And finally, Professor Chris Speed’s (University of Edinburgh) performative paper drove home the point of the materiality of the digital through an immersive experience. Director of IASH and Professor of Penology at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Lesley McAra delivered the closing remarks.
You can watch the full discussion with subtitles below:
Click here to download the full programme, including abstracts and biographies for all speakers.
The panel discussion was generously supported by IASH and the Centre for Data, Culture and Society (CDCS) at the historic MacLaren Stuart Room in Old College, University of Edinburgh.