Data Waste

Abstract

In this contribution, we highlight a phenomenon we call “data waste,” or the carbon emissions, natural resource extraction, production of waste, and other harmful environmental impacts directly or indirectly attributable to data-driven infrastructures. These include platform-based business models, the programming and use of AI systems, and blockchain-based technologies.

We describe data infrastructures as infrastructures that reflect an ideology of permissionless innovation and tend toward monopolization. We explain how these models' platform and network-based structure and the permissionless incentives that characterize them shape their impact on the climate. We discuss how law and legal institutions have facilitated these developments and guide the way towards a systemic understanding of the factors contributing to data waste. We end with a call to frame the issue of data waste as a sociotechnical controversy, and issue that raises important questions about the manifestation of power within data-driven infrastructures and the need to imagine alternatives.

Keywords: climate, digital, justice, platforms, Amazon, Google, Facebook, waste, data, sustainability, sociotechnical, networks, innovation, openness, monopolies

JEL Classification: K32, Q00