Film and video have always had an important role to play in education: Analog formats like 16 mm film and familiar digital video formats like DVD are ubiquitous educational technologies, as are their younger siblings – streaming platforms such as YouTube.
But these technologies come at a cost. As accessible and instantaneous as streaming platforms are, it is easy to forget about the environmental cost of the infrastructure that supports them. Building on an infrastructural approach, this talk will sketch out some of the complexities and environmental ramifications of video streaming.
Focusing, in particular, on some of the less obvious relationships between media infrastructure, video technology and electronics supply chains, we wish to discuss the energy, land and water use associated with streaming video, and the on-going shift of environmental responsibility from streaming providers and data centers towards end users and hardware manufacturers. We hope to provoke a discussion on environmentally responsible media use and point to some alternative approaches.
