By Cody Peters
The purpose of this IP is to dig deeper into the costs of a specific educational technology that you use or have used, that you are being newly called upon to use, or that you have been thinking about using in future.
Student Email Services: While it is undoubtedly an important aspect of any educational institution, especially that of a post secondary institution such as a college or university, what are the true costs of mandating that each student have an institution-specific student email? There are several intrinsic costs on both sides of the implementation here. On the student’s end of the spectrum, there is the sunk cost of requiring a device of some kind that can connect to the internet and function as a form of word processing. This typically takes the form of a computer or handheld device, like a smartphone or tablet. This in turn requires both labor to extract the minerals for their construction, which usually involves a not-insignificant amount of mining, wherein “the history of mining, like the devastation it leaves in its wake, is commonly overlooked in the strategic amnesia that accompanies stories of technological progress” (Crawford, 2021, p. 26), but also a massive amount of human effort and resource expenditure to manufacture (see: everything that it takes to set up an Apple factory, for example). From a sustainability standpoint, there is also a recurring cost, as these devices require near-constant replacement as they become outdated within a few years. There is also the cost in development for these devices that goes into the “intangible” components, such as software and UI interfaces, which also lack sustainability as they change and update the UI or OS typically once a year, and each update requires you to “back up your device to iCloud” (Apple, 2022). In the context of this post, it is virtually impossible to account for the cost to sustainability generated by this constant reworking and updating of the “intangible” aspects of these devices, so let's just leave it at an order of magnitude beyond which I can calculate or comprehend. Returning to the tangible, the average smartphone lasts two and a half years (everphone, 2022), which in turn implies that if a student were to use the bare minimum of a smartphone rather than a more expensive computer, they would go through on average two devices to complete a four year degree. Then there is the cost of having access to the internet in order to utilize the mandated student email, which may be accessible for free on the students behalf either through their institution’s wifi or through public access via something like a library. However, from a sustainability standpoint, there is still a sunk cost here relating to the constant cost of running a wifi router capable of hosting multiple individuals utilizing the internet connection, as well as the physical components related to that as well, such as the wifi modem, the ethernet cables connected to the server, the server itself, and everything else that contributes to this infrastructure. Speaking of infrastructure, there is the massive cost on the institution’s end of the spectrum in regard to having an email service that is clouded to support the massive number of students and faculty that rely on having access to their email service from any location. Obviously, “the cloud is vital infrastructure” (Mills, 2020, p. 1). The sustainability of clouded technology is questionable, as “whether cloud energy demand grows commensurately will depend in large measure in just how fast data use rises, and in particular what the cloud is used for” (Mills, 2020, p. 1). In this case, the cloud is used for access to a myriad of email-related requirements, which is directly tied to enrollment of the institution in question. However, that number also requires consideration when discussing sustainability, as the number of students attending an institution is not limited to the number of people physically in the building anymore; there has been a component of online learning tied to post-secondary institutions for a while, but with the increase of distance learning practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is potentially an even greater number of students attending a given institution in excess of the normal in-person attendance. Regardless of in-person or online attendance, every student requires an integrated email account, increasing the load on the cloud. All of this infrastructure, both physical and digital, is almost impossible to calculate in regard to its impact on resource use and sustainability, as each institution uses different physical and digital systems, and each system uses different beginning and end points for their creation and manufacture. Additionally, much of this information is not publicly available; institutions are cagey with their infrastructure information, especially when it pertains to student and faculty identity and aspects of online infrastructure, as security and protection become increasing concerns as we progress further into the digital age. No one wants their post-secondary institution’s digital security to be lax enough that any stranger on the internet can find out where their modems come from, and the manufacturers are equally non-transparent, as they want to protect their interests in addition to the interests of their clientele. Cyber security has made accounting for the costs of these systems very difficult, and the costs of the cyber security itself can be added on to the sustainability costs as well. There are ragged edges to all of this, and in the words of the late Sir Terry Pratchett:
In reality, thanks to the fractal nature of the universe, this means that those ragged edges are infinite – in the same way that the edge of any rugged coastline, when measured to the ultimate microscopic level, is infinitely long – or, if not infinite, then at least so close to it that Infinity can be seen on a clear day. p.12
References:
What is the average smartphone lifespan? Everphone. (2022, November 28). Retrieved December 11, 2022, from https://everphone.com/en/
Update to iOS 16 or iPadOS 16. Apple. (2022, September 12). Retrieved December 11, 2022, from https://support.apple.com/ios/update
Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI. Yale University Press. (Chapter 1: Earth. pp. 23-51)
Mills, M. (2020). Our love of the cloud is making a green energy future impossible. TechCrunch.
Pratchett, Terry. (1994) Interesting Times. Corgi Books.
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