Online/Offline
One of the conceptual issues that I explore in the first chapter of my thesis is the relationship between 'online' and 'offline' spaces. While a lot of valuable work has been done on the connections and overlaps between these spaces, I think there's still a tendency to assume that cyberspace is a different place, disconnected from 'reality'. This tendency is reflected in the cheerful techno-utopianism of those who think that online, one escapes the disadvantages and limitations faced offline. It also appears in the assumptions by activists in some movements that what happens online doesn't matter to their struggles.
In some senses,it's true that things work differently online - one of the most important aspects of this (for my work) is the ability to easily copy and share information. However, online and offline space are never truly separate. Part of what I'm arguing in my thesis is that even movements that don't use the Internet much should care about what happens online, because it will end up affecting their work. It's also important to remember that the abstract space of bits and bytes that is represented on cyberthrillers by flows of bright green numbers is based on real infrastructure. Fibreoptic cables and satellites and huge banks of servers.
The implications of this are manifold. The IT industry produces a not-insignificant amount of carbon emissions, in part because it has to run and cool those huge banks of servers. And all those devices we use to access 'cyberspace'; mobile phones, PDAs, netbooks, laptops, PCs, are made somewhere, and have to go somewhere when we throw them out. There are plenty of stories on the problems associated with recycling electronics (try here or here or here), and probably plenty of articles on the terribly conditions which electronics workers face. A new report has just come out on the latter issue (via BoingBoing and Difference Engines).
For those who are concerned with ethical consumption, it's a tough issue. You can get fair trade tea and coffee and clothes and puppets and so on...but I didn't see any computers at Oxfam last time I went. One answer is not to upgrade quite so often, and to build computers to last - not ideal, but at least it limits your support for these practices, and produces less ewaste. (The XO seems to making some attempt at this, as well as at 'fair labour' practices: more here.) Another possibility is to look for companies that make some commitment to fair labour practices: I couldn't find much apart from these webcams. We could work as consumers to put pressure on companies by writing letters or boycotting the worst offenders. Or we could, as citizens, put pressure on governments to introduce better labour laws domestically and internationally.
It's not an issue that I think is easily solved, but it's worth paying some attention to.
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Image courtesy of malaqa.com.ar.