On the Sustainability Impacts of Cloud-Enabled Cyber Physical Space

This paper establishes a relation between Cloud Computing and Cyber Physical Space. It demonstrates how Cloud Computing technologies provide necessary technical means to create Cyber Physical Space. At the same time it describes examples of cloud services that already create elements of the Cyber Physical Space., This relation is subsequently used as an important basis for analysis of sustainability impacts of Cloud Computing on human in society and nature. Due to significant growth of Cloud Computing a deep and critical discussion of those impacts is important. The main findings suggest that society is not equipped with right sociological and technical tools to handle the impacts of this rapid change, and that responsibility lays in the design that will ensure the sustainability through properly modeled interactions in Cyber Physical Space.