The LIMITS workshop concerns the role of computing in human societies situated in a world of limits*. As an interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and scholars, we seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general, and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular. LIMITS 2024 solicits submissions that move us closer towards computing that support diverse human and non-human lifeforms and thriving biospheres.
* For example, limits of extractive logics, limits to a biosphere's ability to recover, limits to our knowledge, or limits to technological "solutions".
In 2024, LIMITS will be a virtual, distributed workshop. We welcome participants to organize local gatherings or "LIMITS-hubs" that encourage community-building and sharing of infrastructure. Reach out to Jan Tobias Mühlberg (jan.tobias.muehlberg@ulb.be) if interested.
We welcome scholarship by researchers, engineers, designers, and artists who are investigating and/or (re)designing computing systems that engage with pressing ecological and social issues.
We invite works that build on previous LIMITS work, such as provocations from earlier LIMITS gatherings (e.g., Unplanned Obsolescence, LIMITS 2017), that broadens the understanding of LIMITS (e.g., Age of Consequences, LIMITS 2015), that explores our own limits (e.g., Computing within Psychological Limits, LIMITS 2015), that explores strategies for working in a LIMITed world (e.g., Limits-aware computing, LIMITS 2015), or that design and/or build transitional systems (e.g., Solar-powered website, LIMITS 2021). Transitional Systems attempt to (re) design, implement, and/or evaluate a real-world or hypothetical socio-technical computing system in response to "implications for design" raised by earlier LIMITS papers or LIMITS-related scholarship in the areas of computing and sustainability, computing and climate-justice.
We also encourage authors to envision and submit research on Hypothetical Systems, i.e., proposals for hypothetical computing system or artifact (either software, hardware, or some combination) that embodies LIMITS thinking. Who would use this system? Who might benefit from engaging with the system? Who might be harmed? How are the premises (conceptual or concrete) upon which the system is built different from our current computing systems? How does the LIMITS-informed system enact a different world or ways of being in the world?
We also encourage authors to consider the stories they tell and reify through their work. As Costanza-Chock reminds us, "Stories have power". They ask us to consider, "(...) what stories are told about design problems, solutions, contexts, and outcomes? Who gets to tell these stories? Who participates, who benefits, and who is harmed?" (Costanza-Chock 2020 p. 134)
Paper submission deadline: March 29 April 2nd, 2024, 11:59pm AOE
Paper reviews available: April 26, 2024
Camera ready deadline: May 31, 2024
LIMITS Workshop: June 18-19, 2024
Register and submit papers at this site. (If you have any issues with the submission site, please email kheimerl@cs.washington.edu.)
Papers should adhere to the following guidelines:
Reviewing will be non-blind; authors should include their names and contact information and reviews will include reviewer names.
All papers will be made freely available on the workshop website. Copyright will remain with the authors.
Christoph Becker, University of Toronto, christoph.becker@utoronto.ca
Roy Bendor, Delft University of Technology, r.bendor@tudelft.nl
Eli Blevis, Indiana University, eblevis@indiana.edu
Alan Borning, University of Washington, borning@cs.washington.edu
Miriam Börjesson Rivera, Uppsala University, miriam.borjesson.rivera@it.uu.se
Jay Chen, ICSI, jchen@icsi.berkeley.edu
Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Stockholm University,
tessy@dsv.su.se
Elina Eriksson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
elina@kth.se
Lou Grimal, Hochschule Darmstadt, lou.grimal@h-da.de
Shaddi Hasan, Virginia Tech, shaddi@vt.edu
Kurtis Heimerl, University of Washington,
kheimerl@cs.washington.edu (co-chair)
Fieke Jansen, University of Amsterdam,
fieke@criticalinfralab.net
Srinjoy Mitra, University of Edinburgh,
srinjoy.mitra@ed.ac.uk
Jan Tobias Mühlberg, Université libre de Bruxelles,
jan.tobias.muehlberg@ulb.be (co-chair)
Lisa Nathan, University of British Columbia,
lisa.nathan@ubc.ca
Vineet Pandey, University of Utah, vineet.pandey@utah.edu
Daniel Pargman, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, pargman@kth.se
Barath Raghavan, USC, barath.raghavan@usc.edu
June Salou, Delft University of Technology,
J.Sallou@tudelft.nl
Brian Sutherland, University of Toronto,
b.sutherland@utoronto.ca
Dawn Walker, University of Toronto,
dawn.walker@utoronto.ca