Abstract
As the title suggests, the central question addressed in the book is to review how ‘green’ our smartphones really are. While green is often synonymous with environmentalism, Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller are quick to map out how the term ‘green’ has transformed into a polysemic frame to stand for ‘the good life’ – one that prioritises a new form of global solidarity, which seeks a more secure future for ‘human existence and Earth’s life-support systems’ (p. 15). Thus, these authors attend to this central question by troubling the idea that smartphones are emblematic of human and technological progress, because this rhetoric ignores the material reality and social impact that these digital technologies generate. By drawing on extensive empirical evidence, the authors provide a crash-course on contemporary debates about how this pocket-sized part of our everyday electronic lives impacts our world and well-being.
The book is structured into three main chapters that explore the personal health effects of smartphones, the environmental and social costs of manufacturing and disposing of smartphones and the collusion by industry to supress the health effects and socio-environmental costs of smartphones being known by the public. Chapter 1 focuses on health concerns pertaining to cellphone addiction, the role of smartphone distraction in leading to traffic injuries and fatalities and the emerging science that suggests that the manufactured radiofrequency radiation from cellphone is carcinogenic. The authors encourage the reader in this chapter to ‘outsmart your smartphone’ by being aware of these issues and taking precautionary measures (p. 53). Chapter 2 argues that ‘the greenest smartphone is the one you already own’, by evidencing the high carbon footprint created through the extractive, manufacturing and transport phases of smartphone production, in addition to the social costs of using conflict materials, exploitive labour practices within manufacturing and the growing problem of e-waste (p. 58). Finally, Chapter 3 encourages the reader to ‘call bullshit on anti-science propaganda’ by the smartphone industry (p. 90). The authors draw a parallel between the ‘war-gaming’ of science by the tobacco industry in decades past to the contemporary tactics employed by the smartphone industry to downplay these concerns. In particular, the authors point to the ‘unethical coverage of uncertainty’ within media reporting about the above issues that undermines the realities of smartphone use (p. 102).
This book is part of Polity’s Digital Futures series which aims to provoke critical questions about the new and challenging relationships we encounter with emerging digital media technologies. Certainly, the strength of How Green Is Your Smartphone? is its critical examination of a wide range of issues generated through smartphone production and consumption. In terms of weakness, my only critique of the work stems from a section about 5G and ‘the smog of radiation’ (p. 53). While the authors make evidenced claims about the health concerns of 5G, current conspiracy theories proliferating on social media linking 5G and COVID-19 call for cautionary language on the subject for which, at times, I felt the authors took what others might describe as an alarmist tone (Bruns et al., 2020). Perhaps, given that the objective of the series to raise provocations, this language and style is purposeful. Indeed, How Green Is Your Smartphone? certainly left me thinking about the global impact generated by my own smartphone use.