This project is my master's thesis in Computer Science at NTNU. During my previous semester at NTNU, I started to think about how much we use the internet. That's when I began to dig into the climate consequences of the internet and found a book written by Gerry McGovern - World Wide Waste. The book made me realize that the climate impact of the internet is huge and that we need to do something about it before it's too late.
During the 26 years I've been alive, no one has told me that I pollute every single second that I'm using the internet. During the five years I've been studying computer science, no one has told me about how the things I deploy to the internet pollute. Everything we do on the internet pollutes.
I feel like we today are seeing the internet as we saw the ocean 60 years ago or so. We don't know what's happening when we upload all our images to the cloud; in the same way, we didn't realize what was happening when we threw our garbage in the ocean many years ago. But today, the consequences of all the trash, especially the plastic, that we have thrown into the sea are getting clearer and clearer. That's why I think it's important to focus on saving the internet before it is too late.
It's not many years ago that the cloud became what everyone was talking about. The cloud sounded great. We could upload everything we wanted without thinking about where we last had seen our hard disk. We didn't have to go to the store anymore to buy larger hard disks. We didn't need to worry about losing our hard disk anymore. Well, the cloud isn't a cloud. The cloud is just a lot of massive data centers stored worldwide, consuming enormous amounts of energy. Every time you access the cloud, you access a data center with your files stored on their hard disks. Your data then travels from the data center, in cables, through the world back to your computer. And the worst thing is; as long as you have data stored in the cloud, the data is constantly polluting. The cloud doesn't work like your hard disk, where it is turned off when you don't need your photos. Every image, file, and video you upload to the cloud will pollute until it is deleted. The cloud is always on. You are constantly using the world's resources.
Every time you visit a webpage, you pollute. Every time you send an email, you pollute. Every time you send a Snapchat, you pollute. Every second you are watching a movie on Netflix, you are polluting. Every time you publish an image on Instagram, you are polluting. The more followers you have, the more pollution that image will cause. We can't stop using the internet, and we shouldn't, but we should use it correctly, so we are able to reach the climate goals. We need to stop digital littering. We need to raise awareness around the internet and its carbon footprint. We need to use the internet to our advantage.
The goal of my master's thesis is to make people more aware of how they pollute when using the internet. The ultimate goal will be to change the participants' behavior on the internet. However, I'll be happy with just teaching them a bit about the hidden costs of the internet: How everything we do on the internet is using the world's resources. How free services on the internet are often the worst because they show advertisements in the form of videos and images, which use a lot of resources. How many network pages send hundreds of calls around the globe. And that the traffic I'm able to detect with my plugin is most likely only the tip of the iceberg.
The internet is extremely complex. And at this time it is impossible to understand how much your files in the cloud pollute. However, it is possible to look at how much your internet habits pollute. This is just a part of the whole picture, but hopefully, you will become more aware of how the internet is harming the planet.
Sign up to be a part of this project. Learn how much you are polluting. Learn where in the world you are polluting. Learn what you can do to pollute less. If you don't want to sign up but only read about how you can pollute less, that's alright as well. But as I don't want to influence the results from the two first rounds of this research project, I won't publish details about how you can reduce your climate footprint yet. However, all the instructions on how to reduce the digital carbon footprint will be published here later.