Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability (Hardcover)

Environmental issues often span long periods of time, far-flung areas, and labyrinthine layers of complexity. In Greening through IT, Bill Tomlinson investigates how the tools and techniques of information technology (IT) can help us tackle environmental problems at such vast scales. Tomlinson describes theoretical, technological, and social aspects of a growing interdisciplinary approach to sustainability, "Green IT," offering both a human-centered framework for understanding Green IT systems and specific examples and case studies of Green IT in action.

Tomlinson contrasts the broad ranges of time, space, and complexity against which environmental concerns play out to the relatively narrow horizons of human understanding: it's hard for us to grasp thousand-year projections of global climatic disruption or our stake in melting icecaps thousands of miles away. IT can bridge the gap between human scales of understanding and environmental scales.

Tomlinson offers many examples of efforts toward sustainability supported by IT—from fishers in India who maximized the sales potential of their catch by coordinating their activities with mobile phones to the installation of smart meters that optimize electricity use in California households—and offers three detailed studies of specific research projects that he and his colleagues have undertaken: EcoRaft, an interactive museum exhibit to help children learn principles of restoration ecology; Trackulous, a set of web-based tools with which people can chart their own environmental behavior; and GreenScanner, an online system that provides access to environmental-impact reports about consumer products. Taken together, these examples illustrate the significant environmental benefits that innovations in information technology can enable.

環境問題通常涉及長時間、遙遠地區和複雜的層面。在《綠色IT》一書中，比爾·湯姆林森探討了信息技術（IT）的工具和技術如何幫助我們應對這些龐大的環境問題。湯姆林森描述了可持續發展的日益增長的跨學科方法論“綠色IT”的理論、技術和社會方面，提供了一個以人為中心的框架來理解綠色IT系統，並提供了綠色IT實踐的具體案例和案例研究。

湯姆林森將環境問題的廣泛時間、空間和複雜性與人類理解的相對狹窄視野進行對比：我們很難理解全球氣候破壞的千年預測或我們對數千英里外冰川融化的利益。信息技術可以彌合人類理解和環境尺度之間的差距。

湯姆林森提供了許多以IT支持可持續發展的例子，從印度的漁民通過手機協調活動以最大化魚獲的銷售潛力，到加州家庭安裝智能電表以優化用電。他還提供了三個具體研究項目的詳細研究：EcoRaft，一個互動博物館展覽，幫助兒童學習恢復生態學原則；Trackulous，一套基於網絡的工具，人們可以用它來追蹤自己的環境行為；以及GreenScanner，一個在線系統，提供有關消費品環境影響報告的訪問。這些例子共同展示了信息技術創新所能帶來的重要環境效益。