April 2024
Marks and Przedpelski, "The Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media: Problems, Calculations, Solutions"
09/04/24 15:07
Marks and Przedpelski, "The Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media: Problems, Calculations, Solutions," in Film and TV Production in the Age of Climate Change.
A massive survey, extracted and expanded from our 65-page 2021 report, featuring a critique of the politics of calculating ICT's carbon footprint, the International Energy Agency's attack on The Shift Project, and the small-file solution. On Selected Writings page
A massive survey, extracted and expanded from our 65-page 2021 report, featuring a critique of the politics of calculating ICT's carbon footprint, the International Energy Agency's attack on The Shift Project, and the small-file solution. On Selected Writings page
AI's carbon footprint
09/04/24 14:33
At the Small File Media Festival we are not big fans of AI (or rather, machine learning, as we do not believe these systems are intelligent) which is now the largest contributor to the expansion of data centers and also has a whopping water footprint (though we surmise streaming is still the largest contributor to ICT’s energy use as a whole, given the strain it places on on devices). If you must artifice, please use a small vision-language model like TinyGPT-V, or train a homegrown bot with precise tasks, which will draw less energy.
A few resources:
"Data centers are sprouting up as a result of the AI boom," Business Insider, October 2023 https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-energy-centers-water-energy-land-2023-10
“Artificial Intelligence Threats to Climate Change,” Climate Action against Disinformation
Li et al., “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models”
Patterson et al., “Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training”
Schick and Schütze, “Small Language Models Are Also Few-Shot Learners”
Wang and Wang, “Small language models (SLMs) A cheaper, greener route into AI,” UNESCO
Read More…
A few resources:
"Data centers are sprouting up as a result of the AI boom," Business Insider, October 2023 https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-energy-centers-water-energy-land-2023-10
“Artificial Intelligence Threats to Climate Change,” Climate Action against Disinformation
Li et al., “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models”
Patterson et al., “Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training”
Schick and Schütze, “Small Language Models Are Also Few-Shot Learners”
Wang and Wang, “Small language models (SLMs) A cheaper, greener route into AI,” UNESCO
Read More…
Call for work, Fifth Annual Small File Media Festival!
09/04/24 14:29
Coming very soon at smallfile.ca! We're continuing our partnership with Vancouver's legendary The Cinematheque and streaming at low bitrate worldwide in October. Deadline June 15.
Scaling Down
09/04/24 14:20
My chapter “…Scaling Down: On the Unsustainable Pleasures of Large-File Streaming,” in What Film Is Good For, ed. Julian Hanich and Martin Rossouw, asks, How does the value of postponing satisfaction by enjoying non-streaming media, accompanied by the ethical awareness that one is not damaging the planet, compare with the luxury of movies on demand? And how does the value of watching brief, low-resolution, often low-tech cinema, accompanied by a similar ethical awareness, compare with the enjoyment of energy-intensive high-definition streaming?
I write, "I don’t think I’m the only person who finds the marketed appeal of high-resolution, ‘immersive’ media faintly insulting. It assumes we are so forgetful that we can’t recall what things look like, so unimaginative that our minds can’t fill in details, that our brains and senses have shrunk down to wizened nubs (which, according to McLuhan, they may have). As I demonstrated above, media build a contact between object and viewer, which an engaged viewer can imaginatively realize, even if the video file is low resolution. All media are like executable files—designed to travel small and unpack when they reach their destination."
The book, which relates film to the philosophy of the good life, was awarded Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture at the Popular Culture Association, 2024.
I write, "I don’t think I’m the only person who finds the marketed appeal of high-resolution, ‘immersive’ media faintly insulting. It assumes we are so forgetful that we can’t recall what things look like, so unimaginative that our minds can’t fill in details, that our brains and senses have shrunk down to wizened nubs (which, according to McLuhan, they may have). As I demonstrated above, media build a contact between object and viewer, which an engaged viewer can imaginatively realize, even if the video file is low resolution. All media are like executable files—designed to travel small and unpack when they reach their destination."
The book, which relates film to the philosophy of the good life, was awarded Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture at the Popular Culture Association, 2024.
Collapse Informatics
09/04/24 14:17
My chapter “Collapse Informatics and the Environmental Impact of Information and Communication Technologies” is published in The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies, ed. Alenda Chang, Kiu-Wai Chu, Adrian Ivakhiv, Antonio Lopez, Stephen Rust, and Miriam Tola.
Focusing on the important subcategory of ICT engineering research in sustainability, I argue that ICT’s growth is unsustainable, even given the vaunted efficiency of the technologies, especially as it expands to developing countries. Reviewing some proposed best practices for making ICT use sustainable, I suggest that the movements of slow computing and collapse informatics offer a model for learning to live with decreased expectations. On Selected Writings page
