Digitalization gives people access to a vast network of untapped data, which has the potential to help society and the environment. Smart systems connected to the internet can systematically provide a unique opportunity to solve difficulties related to long-term sustainability. The goals are to create an egalitarian, ecologically sustainable, and healthy society. Technological resources are envisioned as game-changing instruments. Three key concerns integration benefits are highlighted here: (i) sustainable development goals, (ii) socio-economic development, and (iii) the role of digital technology in environmental sustainability. This viewpoint describes the potential that digitization can create a future sustainable society. The technological network would unite the urban and rural worlds under a shared banner of sustainable development, keeping all social elements in the loop. Nations that take a comprehensive strategy will be able to provide equitable growth and an efficient, sustainable, and digital existence for their citizens. As a result, digitization provides better living conditions, active public involvement, clean governance, and transparency in public welfare programs and processes. People who are well-informed, self-aware, and digitally equipped will be better learners, thinkers, reformers, participators, and change and growth agents, marching forward on sustainable progress. The advantages of digitization in hastening the transition to sustainable industrial processes and improving people's health and happiness are explored. Finally, the perspective encapsulates the advantages of digitization by offering a holistic vision of how technology could aid in addressing major challenges such as endangered world biodiversity and climate change.
Digital Degrowth: Radically Rethinking our Digital Futures
We are fast approaching the point of “peak digital”, with the continued mass production and excessive consumption of digital technologies set to become a key driver of climate crisis, ecological breakdown and ongoing societal instability.<br /> <br /><i>Digital Degrowth</i> is a call to completely rethink our digital futures in these fast-changing times. It explores how degrowth thinking and alternate forms of “radically sustainable computing” might support ambitions of sustainable, scaled-down and equitable ways of living with digital technologies. Neil Selwyn proposes a rebalancing of digital technology use: digital degrowth is not a call for simply making reduced use of the digital technologies that we already have – rather it is an argument to reimagine digital practices that maximise societal benefits with minimal environmental and social impact. Drawing on illustrative examples from across computer science, hacker and environmental activist communities, this book examines how core degrowth principles of conviviality, autonomy and care are already being used to reimagine alternate forms of digital technology.<br /> <br />Original and stimulating, this is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication, sustainability studies, political ecology, computer/data sciences, and across the social sciences.
Evaluating Sustainable Digitalization: A Carbon-Aware Framework for Enhancing Eco-Friendly Business Process Reengineering
In an era where sustainability is paramount, understanding the environmental impact of digitalizing business processes is critical. Despite the growing emphasis on sustainable practices, there is a lack of comprehensive methodologies to evaluate how digitalization impacts environmental sustainability compared to traditional processes. This paper introduces a carbon-aware methodological framework specifically designed to assess the sustainability of business process reengineering through digitalization. The Digital Green framework quantitatively analyzes the environmental costs associated with digital transformation, ensuring that truly sustainable digitalization results in lower resource consumption relative to the complexity of the process being digitalized. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the framework was applied to a case study involving the reengineering of an administrative process at a small university in southern Italy. The case study highlighted the framework’s ability to quantify the environmental benefits or detriments of digital transformation, thus guiding organizations toward more sustainable digital practices. This research contributes to the field by offering a concrete tool for aligning digitalization efforts with ecological sustainability, and by paving the way for integration with initiatives such as the Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specifications.
Digitalization
Abstract “Digitization” and “digitalization” are two conceptual terms that are closely associated and often used interchangeably in a broad range of literatures. This entry considers each term in detail and argues that there is analytical value in explicitly making a clear distinction between them. The entry defines digitization as the material process of converting analog streams of information into digital bits. It defines digitalization as the way many domains of social life are restructured around digital communication and media infrastructures.
Digitalisation in Europe – 2025 edition - Interactive publications - Eurostat
Digital technologies are transforming the world we live and work in. They touch many different aspects of our lives, from everyday tasks like making phone calls and shopping to how businesses and public services operate. Digital transformation is one of the key priorities for the EU. The digital decade initiative sets out the EU targets that will guide digital transformation until 2030.
Digitalisation in Europe – 2025 edition - Interactive publications - Eurostat
Digital technologies are transforming the world we live and work in. They touch many different aspects of our lives, from everyday tasks like making phone calls and shopping to how businesses and public services operate. Digital transformation is one of the key priorities for the EU. The digital decade initiative sets out the EU targets that will guide digital transformation until 2030.
Decolonising Global Digital Transformation
The Digital Life Collective
The Digital Life Collective is an enabler. If you think we should be doing something we're not currently doing, we're here to help you and your project make the change you want to see in the world.
Declaration of Digital Autonomy
We demand a world in which technology is created to protect and empower those who are impacted by it. Our technology must respect the rights and freedoms of those users. We need to take control for the purpose of collectively building a better world in which technology works in service to the good of human kind, protecting our rights and digital autonomy as individuals.
Eaten by the Internet
This book makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, which is transforming the social world, from the bottom up—through fifteen chapters contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies. We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not just how we communicate but also how we organise our social life, politics, and economy, all the way down to our material environments, like cities. Our world is eaten by the internet. This means that those who control the internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. The book’s chapters cover a wide set of topics, spanning from the global politics of content moderation by internet infrastructure to the colonialism inherent in the race to plug the moon, from the harms wrought by blockchain companies in rural America to the particularities of online censorship across Asia. The chapters take on thorny topics, discussing power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, the role of internet infrastructure in the war in Ukraine, and tech’s environmental impact—amongst others. In doing so, this book roots contemporary technology debates in the politics of internet infrastructure and urges us to ask how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?
Sovereignty and Landscape | Simon Wardley | 15 comments
X : What is digital sovereignty? Me : I was asked that question by some friends within Government at the beginning of this month. I know some have been working on the idea, which is very encouraging, but I gave my tuppence worth of a definition. "Digital sovereignty is a country's ability to make its own decisions about the technology it uses, the data it creates, and how digital systems work in service of its people rather than being forced to accept choices made by other entities. This requires continuous situational awareness of the economic and technological landscape to anticipate changes, maintain strategic advantage, and shape international digital norms. Digital sovereignty is achieved through strategic control over critical digital assets and relationships, extending from public sector systems to the broader digital ecosystem affecting citizens and economic interests." The key is choice. You are sovereign if you retain the ability to make your own decisions rather than being forced to accept the decisions of others. This doesn't mean you need to own the entire tech stack, or all the data but you do need to maintain control over critical assets and relationships. This can be achieved by many means not just by conflict with others but through co-operation and collaboration (i.e. all the forms of competition matter). You also can consciously compromise, accepting some loss of sovereignty in one space to gain sovereignty in another. Anyway, I quite like the Mike Bracken description https://lnkd.in/eFjzcAdr "Digital sovereignty is the agency and capacity of any organisation to make intelligent, informed choices to shape its digital future by design". I used to do a lot of work on sovereignty many years ago, so if you want to know more about my view and how to achieve this, well I have a series of hopefully useful but somewhat introductory posts. Sovereignty and Landscape https://lnkd.in/eku2X_Ea Societal versus Market benefit https://lnkd.in/eXxkCv-K Whose interests are you serving? https://lnkd.in/eAgHS5wc | 15 comments on LinkedIn
Digital ID: What it means for the digitally excluded – Digital Poverty Alliance
By 2029, proving your right to work in the UK may no longer mean showing a passport or residence permit. Under Government proposals, it could require a digital
An ecological perspective to master the complexities of the digital economy
Economic and social interactions are shifting to digital platforms which grow into vast ecosystems where user engagement creates value for members while ecosystem orchestrators harvest massive revenue. The digital ecosystem business model succeeds by adeptly navigating fast-changing environments, including new technologies and volatile demands, through dynamic innovation in a decentralized decision-making setting. This renders digital platform ecosystems complex adaptive systems. Recognizing that natural ecosystems are a prime example of complex adaptive systems, we propose a systematic hierarchical framework for describing and understanding digital ecosystems, rooted in ecology and evolution. Our framework compares digital ecosystems hosted by societies to natural ecosystems embedded in biomes, products to species, and technologies and elements of business strategy to the genetic makeup of a species. As digital platforms face heightened scrutiny about their socio-economic power and societal value, our approach contributes to the development of deeper understanding and sustainable governance of the digital economy.
Sustainable Web Manifesto
“If the Internet was a country, it would be the 13th largest polluter”
Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams
I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…
The Impact of Digital Business on Energy Efficiency in EU Countries
Digital business plays a crucial role in driving energy efficiency and sustainability by enabling innovative solutions such as smart grid technologies, data analytics for energy optimization, and remote monitoring and control systems. Through digitalization, businesses can streamline processes, minimize energy waste, and make informed decisions that lead to more efficient resource utilization and reduced environmental impact. This paper aims at analyzing the character of digital business� impact on energy efficiency to outline the relevant instruments to unleash EU countries� potential for attaining sustainable development. The study applies the panel-corrected standard errors technique to check the effect of digital business on energy efficiency for the EU countries in 2011�2020. The findings show that digital business has a significant negative effect on energy intensity, implying that increased digital business leads to decreased energy intensity. Additionally, digital business practices positively contribute to reducing CO2 emissions and promoting renewable energy, although the impact on final energy consumption varies across different indicators. The findings underscore the significance of integrating digital business practices to improve energy efficiency, lower energy intensity, and advance the adoption of renewable energy sources within the EU. Policymakers and businesses should prioritize the adoption of digital technologies and e-commerce strategies to facilitate sustainable energy transitions and accomplish environmental objectives.
Please join this webinar on Moving from Harmful Platforms to Social Technologies, discussing how digital public goods and other open-source solutions can support the scaling of a more transparent, interoperable, and accountable social technology landscape. 📝 Register Here zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__IHGcRbVR…
