[AISWorld] How is this not an IS issue?

[Roger Clarke]

At 10:24 -0400 20/10/10, John Artz wrote:
>I am reluctant to get into the fray of global warming as I see it as 
>a no win situation. However, since the information that people base 
>their opinions on is acquired, processed, analyzed and displayed 
>using information technology, how is this NOT an IS/IT issue. If 
>people in an organization were making good or bad decisions or were 
>confused by the information coming out of their information systems, 
>wouldn't that be a concern to us. Isn't this the same issue on a 
>much larger scale?

At the Bled Conference in June 2009, two separate paper-presenters 
bemoaned the lack of anything in the IS literature worth citing.

(Coincidentally, both of us were Australians - do we have a guilty 
conscience or what??  Oops, and just as I was about to post this, 
Helen Hasan has bobbed up too, confirming that we *know* how much 
we're contributing to the problem ...):

Those papers were:

Clarke R. 'An eCommerce Perspective on Carbon Trading'
http://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2009/23

Elliot S. 'Developing Organizational Capabilities in SMEs: Enabling 
Environmentally Sustainable ICT'
http://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2009/24

But it's changing.

Quick (i.e. unaudited) searches in the AIS eLibrary now produce:
-   for <global warming> - 46 hits, 3 in the Abstract
-   for <emission trading> - 15 hits, 1 in the Abstract
-   for <carbon trading> - 23 hits, 1 in the Abstract
-   for <Green IT> - 22 in the Abstract
-   for <Green IS> - 7 in the Abstract

(Unfortunately, the search-engine is very poor with strings and 
phrases, so I couldn't get meaningful results for full-text searches 
on <ETS>, <Green IT> and <Green IS>).


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University