In the context of sustainability, climate and environmental protection, great expectations are placed on digital technologies. For example, they are supposed to contribute to solving human-made ecological problems such as climate change if resources are better distributed and saved with their help. But will digital technologies really help to ensure sustainability? Or will they even have the opposite effect and harm efforts to protect the climate and the environment when, for example, gigantic server farms consume large amounts of energy or raw materials for chip production are mined in environmentally harmful ways? These questions are discussed by Lorenz Hilty and James Maguire.
Lorenz Hilty illuminates the dialectic between opportunities and risks that the use of digital information and communication technologies entails in the context of sustainability. To this end, he addresses the contribution of digital technologies to greater sustainability on the one hand and draws attention to ecological, social and ethical aspects associated with the use of these technologies on the other.
James Maguire looks at sustainability, renewable energies, digital technologies and data infrastructures from an anthropological perspective. In his lecture he explains his concepts of the “digital Anthropocene” highlighting the connections between computerisation processes and the environment.
Digital media technologies present us with additional challenges, offer solutions and at the same time change our awareness of our natural living conditions.
