Sustainable IT Holds Opportunities For The UK

Peter Judge,

Computing can affect the future of this planet, says the Cambridge professor of computing, Andy Hopper. And there are opportunities for the UK here – if we can handle our fear of change 

  • Building Better World Models: Better models of the world can predict and respond to the kinds of changes, like global warming, which concern us all, says Hopper. “There is some way to go on using large scale large scale computer resources to model the world,” he says. “The platforms themselves – the basic code, the computer science – have to be more robust. Also you need better features to model the physical world better.”

    The problem is time, he says. Unlike a physics experiment, you never get to stop the data and spend time writing up. You also need to trade off the horsepower you have, and the accuracy you need.

  • Digital alternatives to physical activities: “We change the way we live our lives, so we do much more of it in the physical world,” he says. Shopping, working and every other aspect of our lives, can be made more energy-efficient, using IT.Lifestyle changes often focus on the Western world, but he wants to see an impact in the developing world: “I really am hopeful, that this can improve trade with the part of the world which is just developing, so more wealth is created for them, without harming the environment.”

    He has been to Africa to look at green issues, and warns against importing our ideas there: “The last thing you want is to be colonial,” he says.

    • Fear of change

    The most important of these points is number four, says Hopper. In fact, he says: “It’s the answer. But it’s the most wacky, and it’s the one I feel most insecure about.” It’s not yet clear how inolvement in cyberspace will play out, he says – because we have to accept changes which might be scary.

    Areas of monitoring and feedback can involve fears of surveillance and loss of privacy, for instance. The answer here is to get audience support and involvement: “Bootstrapping from the bottom up can resolve the dilemma in each person’s mind,” he says. “But it can have the opposite effect. People will never touch something again if you do it the wrong way.”

    We will also have to develop sensible attitudes to intellectual property rights, so none of these ideas get held up by copyright or similar issues, he warns. “It disappoints me that the flexibility in the system has been much reduced by this.”

    Computing for the future of IT?

    IT managers come across all of this – and all Hopper’s four issues – in a smaller form within their company, we suggest, and Hopper agrees. As well as making business IT more efficient, staff can also embed IT into the whole company to make it more efficient, they can use technology to model the company’s activity, and – eventually – change the way people work within it.