We are here at CALIT2 and we're going to be speaking with Dan Stokols from the School
of Social Ecology who is somebody that several of us have worked with recently and who I
think has some really interesting perspectives on the topic. Here with Dan Stokols who is
a professor here at UCI. Dan is in the Department of Social Ecology here and we're interested
in getting his opinion on some the celebrated ideas from the class. Thank you very much
for coming and allowing yourself to be interviewed by us.
My pleasure.
The first thing I wanted to ask you about, the topics of our course focus on how do you
satisfy basic human needs in a sustainable way, and one major aspect that we're talking
about is infrastructure and infrastructures serve to address human needs in a variety
of ways. I was wondering from your point of view could you tell us what infrastructure
is and how it relates to these topics?
To my mind infrastructures are really the basic resources that are needed to support
and sustain a system. It could be a physical system, it could be a biological system, technological
system, but these resources could be organized into different categories ranging from social
kinds of resources, to physical and material resources, to cyber kinds of resources, biological
as in the case of ecosystem services. I think an important aspect of sustainability is the
extent to which these various resources are interfaced well and the flows those different
kinds of resources, and to the extent that those are functioning well the system tends
to be more sustainable.
That's really interesting. I was also wondering, you come from the Department of Social Ecology.
The School of Social Ecology.
Which has three departments. I'm in the psyche and social behavior department and the planning,
policy and design department. There is Criminology, Law and Society.
Okay, thanks. What are some challenges? From the point of view of the disciplines that
you've worked with what are some of the challenges of sustainability as you see it?
I think a key challenge is that there are so many different and competing conceptions
of sustainability. A challenge is to get enough of the interested players or stakeholders
on the same page as to what is meant by sustainability. Some definitions of sustainability include
the notion of preserving for future generations sufficient levels of resources that they are
able to thrive. Other notions of sustainability incorporate much more heavily notions of equity,
justice, protecting vulnerable groups. In other words, what is sustained for whom in
society among varying groups? One can take a kind of economic frame and apply it to sustainability,
one can look at it from a kind of philosophical moral point of view. A social ecological perspective
implies an integration across several different of those perspectives, kind of an inter or
transdisciplinary amalgamation or integration of points of view about sustainability that
many folks can agree on. I think the challenge is getting enough of the interested stakeholders
in the system to agree on what are the key features or goals of sustainability. For example,
whether equity and justice have to be traded off or should be traded off for some economic
gains in the system, in a society, whether those three goals of people, plan and profits
can be integrated effectively so that they are all accommodated in a kind of equitable
fashion.
I'm interested to hear you mention equity because we recently applied for an NSF CyberSEES
grant and in NSF's definition of sustainability for the first time that I have seem it coming
out of the NSF they used equitable as one of their words. I was glad to see that showing
up in NSF's definition of sustainability.
I think it's really important because I think so many of the threats to the world's future
welfare can be rooted in the stark polarization that we are seeing throughout the world whether
that be along political lines, religions lines, economic lines. There are often arguments
and disagreements about what is equitable for who. Whose interests are being optimized
for our future world?
One other main topic in our course is information technology. I was wondering if you have any
thoughts on how information technology might be able to be brought to bear on some of these
issues?
I think information technology is vitally important in promoting sustainability goals.
I think there are a variety of ways in which information technology systems can contribute
to that effort. One area is in terms of providing feedback about what their behaviors are and
what their resource consumption is like on a day-to-day basis. Studies show that the
more people know what they're doing and have that kind of feedback, the more they can align
their behavior with particular goals that might be closely related to sustainability.
So, there is that kind of feedback function that information technology can provide. There
is a kind of visioning function where technological systems can portray images of the future that
aren't salient to people in the present, but when they see these images of what a heated
up planet might look like 50 to 100 years down the road it can engage their behavior
and their concern in a much more direct way. There are efforts underway to use appeals
to people's emotions. Certain artists, environmental artists, use very stark images of the future
or the present to get people focused on the importance of sustainability and to engage
their behavior in line with those goals. I think there is a feedback function, there
is a visioning function. Information technology systems can also be very important in monitoring
environmental conditions to see exactly how sea rise is shifting from year to year for
example, or the composition of air. So, in many ways that environmental monitoring helps
inform our images of the future and what we want to do about them. I think also information
technology can be used for greater communication and collaboration among people in a society
to enable them to coordinate more effectively in terms of shared goals. Nowadays with the
growing alarm and concern about planetary warming there is more and more need for that
kind of coordination and communication among people in different parts of the world. I
think there are a lot of ways in which information technology is vital.
Great. I want to tie into, you mentioned the visioning and the artists getting people engaged,
I feel like there is sort of a flip side to that which is marketing and convincing people
to do things against their best interests. I was wondering if you would comment on some
of the ethical considerations of trying to convince people or use psychology to cause
people to behave in environmentally sensitive ways?
There certainly is a very well-developed science of persuasion in the field of social psychology
where there are certain principles that can be applied to influence and change people's
behavior. I think the kinds of functions I was mentioning that information technology
can be used for such as feedback and visioning to me don't pose as stark ethical concerns
as let's say applying information technology to reinforce or shape particular behaviors
in a given direction. Giving people feedback about what's going on in the world, how the
environment is actually changing objectively, what different scenarios of the future might
look like I think is informative and it's not unduly focused on trying to manipulate
behavior. On the other hand, you could make the case that some of these persuasive technologies
that are being used to shape behavior in a more sustainable way aren't ethical because
the individuals that are exposed to them don't know that they are being exposed, and there
I think we get into a very complex and philosophical set of tradeoffs between the dire ramifications
of global warming which more and more data suggests are very, very serious and crucial
and if we don't do something about them that's a moral issue in terms of letting the planet
go off kilter and become another Venus for example where we heat up beyond the point
where life can sustain here. In some cases those kinds of ethical goals have to be traded
off I would say. It's not to say we should plunge willy-nilly into trying to shape everyone's
behavior to do certain things in their home or on the road, but I think there is a case
that could be made for some of that happening in light of the evidence that is piling up
about the fairly dire challenges we face in the realm of environmental change. What can
we do to offset the consequences of those, and that becomes a moral issue or choice in
some right.
I guess people's behaviors are being shaped all the time by a lot of different forces.
True.
So having some that are representing sustainability issues rather than just corporate issues or
other perspectives might have some place in it.
Yes, and I think there is an issue to some extent of informed consent to the extent that
people know that these systems are in place. They concur with them and they are aligned
with societal goals and people are more on the same page then the ethical concern tends
to diminish that.
I see.
If they are just being applied in a way that isn't transparent and is manipulative without
people knowing that it's there or without choosing that it be there. In there home for
example somebody can invest in a feedback system so that they can monitor their behavior
in the home in terms of energy consumption etc., so it becomes a personal or a family
choice, but we are probably moving to the point where these reinforcement systems and
persuasive technologies are going to be rather pervasive in society and maybe not everybody
is going to have input as to whether those be implemented or not.
Okay. Well, thank you very much, Dan, for taking the time to be interviewed for our
class.
Sure, my pleasure. It sounds like a great class.
Thanks so much.
What is your favorite app on your phone?
My favorite app. That's a good question. I've been using Twitter a fair amount, more than
I ever thought I would.
What's surprising about Twitter for you?
I always thought it was dumb that people would be wasting time on all these tweets, but then
I realized that it's an amazing networking and information sharing platform, especially
when people incorporate URLs in their tweets. I've found it to be pretty interesting that
way in terms of broadening the kinds of materials and sources that I read. I try to regulate
how much time I spend on it because I've got enough e-mail to deal with certainly. I use
Facebook some, but I've been using Twitter a little bit more partly because I saw my
son who is a journalist use it in a very kind of pervasive way to break stories, follow
leads and sources, that kind of thing, so I got curious about it and started using it
more.
What did you have for lunch?
What I had for lunch. I had some lox, a banana and iced mocha. It wasn't bad.
What's your banana story?
Okay, so, hearing that Dan had had a banana for lunch it reminded me of when I was in
grad school I had a guy named Richard Wrangham on my dissertation committee, and he was the
world expert in aggression in chimpanzees and so he studied apes effectively. In the
grad school I went to it was known that when you were doing qualifying exams as part of
your PhD you should call all of the people who are going to be there and make sure there
was food that they would like. So, I called up my advisor and he wanted diet coke, and
I called up somebody else and they wanted pastries, and so I called up Richard's Wrangham's
assistant, this is the assistant to the guy who is like the world expert in chimpanzees,
and said well, what do you think he would like? She's like oh, he likes bananas and
I was like of course he does. So anyway, that's my banana story.
Did you have bananas at your dissertation?
Oh, I did.
Did it go well?
I passed.
There you go. What app are you most excited about today in the now?
Recently I've been excited about the Zillow app because you can drive around and you can
find out how much all the properties cost.
Mm, property stalking.
Yeah. You can like drive by your neighbors and like figure out how much their house costs
and stuff. It doesn't work in University Hills though because everything is off the books.