I initially became interested in the Digital Scholarship Summer Research Fellowship because I feel myself to be a pitiful academic researcher and writer, in comparison to what I wish or hope or strive to one day be if I could juuust harness the diligence/focus to turn good ideas into persuasive words. I see myself as an avid reader and learner, and at times even a haver of brilliant flashes of insight, but when it’s needed that I dig into a subject in a directed way, moving through social media and journalistic coverage and into academic resources such as journal articles and scientific studies, I get lost. Attempting to collate the products of my research/interest into digestible insights and conclusions, I also fall short. I applied to join this program because I hope to benefit from a structured introduction to doing and presenting academic work. I seek to dramatically improve my ability to both understand and communicate the subjects about which I am passionate, which broadly fall under the categories of technological and environmental ethics and the propagation of imperial mindsets.
The idea for my project springs from a research paper I worked on during the Fall 2024 semester, which was broadly about the origin and global proliferation of plastics. Plastics, and particularly pollution related to the plastics lifecycle – from production to usage, disposal, and degradation into microplastic – as well as the global crisis of plastic waste, have grown to represent a global existential threat. Issues related to plastics seem to me to constitute a significant component of what the United Nations (UN) has deemed the “Triple Planetary Crisis” – the interrelated problems of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss that represent the most pressing threats to life on earth. Initially, I had thought to explore the apparent failure of the fifth and ostensibly final negotiation session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC), an intergovernmental body tasked in 2022 by the UN with creating a global instrument on plastic pollution. This so-called final negotiation session took place at the end of 2024 and failed to result in a treaty; however, the session was, fortunately, extended into a second and, ostensibly, truly final session which will take place in Switzerland in August of this year.
Since initially engaging with my research into plastics, though, as a computer science student, I have also become interested in the fast-growing issues of AI ethics – in particular, the ethics of generative AI and LLM proliferation and usage. I am particularly interested in what “ethical use of AI” actually means, or if it’s possible. I am skeptical that it is, considering that I see genAI and LLMs as just the latest application of the same imperialist thinking that gave us the plastic waste crisis. Hence, I am considering shifting my focus from plastics/the international plastics treaty to the broad field of digital waste, which might include an examination of e-waste (intimately related to the plastic waste crisis), excessive energy use inherent to producing and maintaining digital landscapes/resources, and the wasteland that some observe/fear the internet is becoming.
I do not think that choosing a particular subject for my research is the most important factor that will determine my success on this project. What I hope to gain from my experience this summer is learning how to approach the subjects that interest me in a focused and directed manner, how to organize my ideas, draw conclusions, successfully articulate my insights, and effectively communicate the results of my work. Since learning about the digital humanities is a significant part of this fellowship experience, I also hope to learn more about what the digital humanities means and how I can use that lens to enrich the process of learning and communicating about the issues that I consider important. A core part of my identity is my ability to delve into ethical ideas and effectively communicate the fruits of those ideas, and I am hopeful that this fellowship will provide an opportunity for me to bring my dreams for myself, my dreams of changing hearts and minds, further into line with my actual skills in identifying and discussing pressing global issues.