The Cool Kids Corner:
Hello! I’m Mark Horseman, and welcome to The Cool Kids Corner. This is my monthly check-in to share with you the people and ideas I encounter as a data evangelist with DATAVERSITY. (Read last month’s column here.) This month, we’re talking about data ethics. The technology shift since the global pandemic has given rise to a new way of being online. The new culture around the use of collaboration tools like Slack, Teams, and Zoom has gifted society with a new way to interact with our peers, be that for better or worse. Also, the technology landscape has exploded with large language models (LLMs) that have changed the way people get the job done. There are new things to consider in data ethics, and ultimately, we’ll see what the Cool Kids are saying.
Since the pandemic, the nature of how work is done has changed. Even netherlands whatsapp number data in a traditional office setting, people interact and communicate differently than they have before. This culture shift was brought on by necessity and became a (mostly) welcome shift in office behavior. Many of us now have the flexibility to work from home or in a hybrid home-and-office mix. Consequently, our work collaboration has evolved to take advantage of tools like Teams, Slack, and even video-calling tools like Zoom. The mass adoption of these types of tools has been fascinating. What we’ve never considered as it relates to these tools: What is the environmental impact of their use?
Specifically, what is the carbon footprint associated with retaining “Hey, wanna hit up that pizza place for lunch today?” in your collaboration tool for an extended period? Daragh O Brien enlightened me about this concept; he is a co-author along with Katherine O’Keefe of “Data Ethics: Practical Strategies for Implementing Ethical Information Management and Governance” (use code Dataversity20 for 20% off). While collaboration tools have enabled wonderful social interaction in new ways, having in-person interactions in an office setting doesn’t result in scads of conversational data being stored for way too long a period. Heck, just being mindful of the default retention policies in your collaboration tools could save tons of carbon from the atmosphere.