What is Digital Sustainability and How Does It Support the SDGs?

### What is Digital Sustainability and<br>How Does It Support the SDGs? <br>Birk Weiberg Hack the Promise, 28.09.24 --- ### Old wine in new bottles? 🍾 note: - a few disclaimers - aim is not so much to present new ideas, but rather a revisiting, reordering, or repacking of some concepts related to the digital transformation and sustainability - motivation: there are a lot of good ideas circulating but in many cases the implementation is making only slow progress - questions: How can new narratives help these ideas to become more effective? What might be more successful strategies? - This talk is not so much about facts and fictions but rather about ideas and narratives. - my perspective: art school or more broadly: publicly funded education and research in the humanities --- ### Digital Sufficiency 📵<br>vs.<br>Techno-utopianism 🚀 note: - The ecological side effects of the digital transformation are well known. - The digital economy as a market economy is built on extractive practices both in regard to the materials needed to built devices and the energy required to run them. - logical reaction: call for restraints, for digital sufficiency - countermovement to this perspective of digitality as a threat to climate: techno-optimistic utopias of geo-engineering - = dichotomy of either critique or praise of Western modernism and its conception of progress - -> sufficiency is not a bad idea but as such not very attractive - -> art school/humanities perspective: we have little to contribute --- ### A mess of good ideas 🎰 note: - a popular but here unnamed book on digitality and sustainability names three guiding principles for a sustainable digitalization - digital sufficiency (= As much digitalization as necessary, as little as possible.) - consistent data privacy - orientation to the common good - From these principles, the authors derive individual measures, all of them good ideas. - but: lack of a coherent concept, what exactly is the relationship between sustainability and data privacy? - = ineffective approach because it reaches primarily those who are already convinced - result: virtue signaling by a minority --- <a href="https://oss-studie.ch/assets/pdfs/OSS-Studie2024.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="https://iup.crowing.me/ipfs/QmNX2qFBmZb7J9PBxZuqgPSV8Foh42HsR5mBnZy3L3Uydg/Berner_Fachhochschule_2024_Open_Source_Studie_Schweiz_2024_page_1.webp" alt="Open Source Studie Schweiz 2024" width="40%" /></a> note: - to give just one example: **Open Source** software is a **good idea**. - But when it comes to its use, there hasn't been a significant advancement to make it more popular. - The just published Open Source Report Switzerland states here: **"Open source software is strongly represented wherever end users do not see the software."** (p. 13) - It exists in a niche and I see little chance of that changing. --- <img src="https://iup.crowing.me/ipfs/QmcmsXA4Vdo22FaaxTzVM9niW7D7cfu5orn8nm3VG8FQev/OpenSourceReportCHMeta.webp" alt="Open Source Studie Schweiz 2024 Meta" width="50%" /> note: - fun fact: Even the authors of the report didn't use open source software to publish their findings. - What is the alternative? Can there be one comprehensive concept that encompasses many but maybe not all of these good ideas? Can that concept be Digital Sustainability? --- ### Sustainability and the SDGs <div class="quote" style="margin-top: 2em;">“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”<br><i>– “Our Common Future” (Brundtland Report, 1987)</i></div> note: - (very) quick recap of the origins of sustainability - "Our Common Future" (Brundtland Report, 1987) defined sustainable development: (quote) - 1992, Rio: action plan Agenda 21, not only about climate, starts with a chapter on "Social and Economic Dimensions" ---  <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Sustainable_Development_Goals.svg" width="80%" /> note: - 2015: Agenda 2030 with 17 SDGs ---  <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/SDG_wedding_cake.svg" width="90%" /> note: - In the current discourses sustainability comes in three "sizes": as merely ecological, as eco-social (like in concepts of eco-social transformation), or (more rarely) by addressing the ecological, the social, and the economic dimension of sustainability. --- ### Digital Sustainability note: - very broadly understood asks the question: What are the relationships between digitality and sustainability (in all three domains)? - or: How can digitality (as technology and practice) support sustainability? - digital sustainability vs. sustainable digitization ... --- #### Digital Public Goods:<br>non-excludable & non-rivalrous <div style="font-size: 0.7em; margin-top: 3em;"> <table> <tbody> <tr> <th>Properties of the digital good</th> <td><ol> <li>elaborateness (quality of the software or data)</li> <li>transparent structures</li> <li>semantic data (data is machine-readable including metadata)</li> <li>distributed location</li> </ol></td> <tr> <th>Properties of the ecosystem</th> <td><ol start="5"> <li>open licensing regime</li> <li>shared tacit knowledge</li> <li>participatory culture</li> <li>good governance</li> <li>diversified funding</li> </ol></td> </tr> <tr> <th>Impact on Society</th> <td><ol start="10"><li>contribute to sustainable development</li></ol></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>(Stürmer, 2017)</p> </div> note: - "Digital Sustainability" in Switzerland has been promoted by Matthias Stürmer - His definition of Digital Public Goods builds on the economic understanding of public goods as **non-excludable** (everybody has access to them) and **non-rivalrous** (using such goods does not decrease the value for others). - (elaborate on list) - digital public goods as a more specific form of digital commons --- ### Roadmap for Digital Cooperation <div class="two-column-layout"> <div class="column image-column"> <a href="https://digitalpublicgoods.net/standard/" target="_blank"><img src="https://iup.crowing.me/ipfs/QmQZvBCnSiNnYtJLeDkFxzUP7KbU2SZUZuQdJo35YxY8V7/RoadmapDigitalCooperation.webp" /></a> </div> <div class="column text-column"> <p>“Digital technology does not exist in a vacuum – it has enormous potential for positive change, but can also reinforce and magnify existing fault lines and worsen economic and other inequalities.”</p> <p>“Digital public goods are essential in unlocking the full potential of digital technologies and data to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular for low- and middle-income countries.”</p> </div> </div> note: - Digital Public Goods also play a key role in the UN's "Roadmap for Digital Cooperation" (2020) - The report addresses several challenges of digital technologies like the digital divide between developed and developing countries, the risk of misinformation, etc. - Digital Public Goods are one of several objectives of the report within the digital domain. The others are global connectivity, inclusion, capacity building, human rights, Artificial Intelligence, trust and Security, global cooperation. - The digital transformation is recognized by the UN as crucial for the SDGs because it has the potential to either support global justice or increase the digital divide. - (quotes) - -> Rich countries like Switzerland have the possibility and obligation to share their non-excludable and non-rivalrous digital goods. ---  ### Digital Public Goods Standard <img src="https://digitalpublicgoods.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/23195609/Screenshot-2023-06-23-at-15-55-36-DPGA-full-slide-template_June-2021.png" alt="Digital Public Goods Standard" width="80%" /> note: - The Digital Public Goods Standard was published right after the UN Roadmap and offers an implementation of its ideas by providing specifications and guidelines for facilitating the acknowledgement of such goods, may they be AI systems, software, data, or content collections. --- ### Digital Public Goods Standard <ol style="margin-top: 1em; font-size: 0.8em; width: 80%"> <li>Relevance to Sustainable Development Goals</li> <li>Use of Approved Open Licenses</li> <li>Clear Ownership</li> <li>Platform Independence</li> <li>Documentation</li> <li>Mechanism for Extracting Data</li> <li>Adherence to Privacy and Applicable Laws</li> <li>Adherence to Standards & Best Practices</li> <li>Do No Harm by Design (Data Privacy & Security, Inappropriate & Illegal Content, Protection from Harassment)</li> </ol> note: - The 9 requirements, which the standard defines, are largely congruent with the the ones proposed by Stürmer. - from an academia perspective: both standards are good guidelines for academic output that is not static text or data, which are covered by concepts such as Open Access and the FAIR principles. --- ### Digital Reset 🔀 note: - While these standards and definitions come across as both formalistic and practical, other initiatives like *Digitalization for Sustainability* at TU Berlin have taken a more political approach. In its final report, Digital Reset, the initiative concludes that an economic system based primarily on the idea of growth will never be sustainable and must therefore question its primary purpose. - In other words: Even though digital goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous and come with a high potential for a sustainable economy, capitalism will always undermine these advantages, e.g. with DRM and closed licenses, because they run against its grain. - The authors of Digital Reset also show how closely the digital transformation is linked to capitalist economies when it facilitates the generation of income from capital rather than labor. --- ### HEI Options<br>📄 🤸 🪇 note: - At this point, I want to return to the questions of what higher education institutions (HEI) and, in particular, humanities and arts institutions can do to develop and promote digital sustainability. How can they make a difference that is hopefully more effective than individual responsible behavior of their members? - The ideas and examples I will give fall into three categories: output, practices, and tools. --- ### Output 📄 note: - When it comes to research output there are the well established concepts or the good ideas of **Open Access and Open Science**. - But in my opinion they do come with a least **two significant problems**. - One is that publishing companies, who used to make their profits from high subscription fees that often only universities in the Global North could afford, are now charging high publication fees for Open Source articles from researchers that only the same wealthy countries can afford. There is thus a significant risk that the North-South divide in knowledge production will simply be replicated. - The second problem ist that the content of the output does not change. Books with low circulation turn into PDFs with not significantly more downloads. - To become more sustainable in itself, academia -- funded by public money -- should probably think about forms of output that are more accessible to non-academics and to broaden its audience. - This is also relevant because mass media and journalism are on the verge of their next crisis, as they also have to see information as a commodity. After the problems of monetizing their content online, generative AI is about to rewrite that content -- information collected and processed by humans -- in so many ways that it will become even harder to finance its original production. - This could be an opportunity for academia to get more involved, since it is not subject to the same economic constraints. And it could be as simple as contributing to Wikipedia articles. - A broader audience should not just include more humans but also machines, i.e. by providing information also in machine-readable formats. - At a recent hackathon, I worked with a researcher from our school to make a dataset of over 700 independent Swiss art spaces more accessible after it was used to produce a traditional academic book on the Swiss art scene. --- <iframe style="width: 1400px; height: 600px; border: none;" src="https://query.wikidata.org/embed.html#%23%20locations%20of%20artist-run%20initiatives%0A%23defaultView%3AMap%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fproject%20%3FprojectLabel%20%3Fgeo%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%7B%20%3Fproject%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3325736.%20%7D%0A%20%20UNION%0A%20%20%7B%20%3Fproject%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ4034417.%20%7D%0A%20%20%3Fproject%20wdt%3AP17%20wd%3AQ39.%0A%20%20%3Fproject%20wdt%3AP625%20%3Fgeo.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D" referrerpolicy="origin" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups" ></iframe> note: - We have ingested the data on these art spaces, which often leave hardly any trace once their websites have been shut down, into Wikidata. - And what you see here is a map of these places. - The structured data of Wikidata is often used by search engines and for AI models. So this form of documentation also supports the very idea of representation. --- ### Practices 🤸 note: - Output formats themselves also can be more or less sustainable. - And while before I was complaining about PDFs in academic repositories, these are at least stable formats that will likely survive for many years. - But when humanities scholars in ambitious projects try to become more digital, they create their own project websites. This was also the case with the research project on Swiss art spaces. However, these websites are difficult to maintain and are not created with sustainability in mind. - Johanna Drucker of UCLA has written about her personal experiences with such project sites during her 20 years in the digital humanities. She concludes that scholars need to acquire certain digital skills if they want to produce anything other than books. --- <div class="quote">“As much as possible, individual researchers should work within their means – technical, institutional, intellectual, and financial. You should know how your project works and be able to sustain and modify it on your own.”<br><i>– Drucker, 2021</i></div> note: - This ties in with the position of the organizers of the **Bits & Bäume** conference when they demand that curricula must aim at enhancing digital literacy instead of teaching specific software applications -- no matter if they are proprietary or open source. - So a crucial part of digital sustainability in this field is to appropriate technology, to develop an own culture, and communities of practice. --- ### Tools 🪇 note: - In recent years, there have been national and cantonal laws in Switzerland that mandate that software developed for public services must be open source and reusable by others. An example is the [EMBAG](https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2023/682/de), the Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Administrative Duties. - Universities are not subject to the laws of public administration, but should be guided by them, since they are also financed by public funds. - The idea of public money, public code can be applied to different kinds of software. --- <a href="https://github.com/CreativeInquiry/OSSTA-Report"><img src="https://iup.crowing.me/ipfs/QmZRv5bb5SMKYFLy4Ry3tz6SrTS9m2NYJWMcKoWAewnjV7/Lee_McCarthy_et_al_2021_Open_Source_Software_Toolkits_for_the_Arts_OSSTA_page_1.webp" width="400" /></a> note: - Art schools use Open Source software for things like creative coding but as the OSSTA report from 2018 shows the financing of this software is precarious. Development and maintenance are usually done by volunteers. And I'm not aware of any contributions from Swiss art schools that at the same time spend a lot of money on commercial software licenses. - SUPSI and Arduino as a possible exception --- <iframe style="width: 1400px; height: 600px; border: none;" src="https://demo.leihs.zhdk.ch" referrerpolicy="origin" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups" ></iframe> note: - There are examples of art schools developing software and an interesting one is [leihs](https://github.com/leihs) by ZHdK, an inventory management and lending system used by many organizations worldwide. But usually such endeavors are only accepted because of lack of commercial software. If tomorrow somebody would offer such a software as a commercial service, I wouldn't be surprised if a project like this was dead. - The change that the introduction of digital sustainability and an alignment with the criteria for digital public goods could bring is to ask not only about the value of such software to the organization that produces it with public money, but also to a broader community that uses it. --- <iframe style="width: 1400px; height: 600px; border: none;" src="https://spaces.udk-berlin.de" referrerpolicy="origin" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups" ></iframe> note: - Another option is a setup at the Berlin University of the Arts that uses several F/LOSS applications like Etherpad and PeerTube together with an own CMS based on the Matrix protocol as a distributed and flexible system. - Approaches like this have been described as small or minor tech. --- <div class="quote">“A minor technology is that which a minority constructs within the grammar of technology.”<br><i>– Andersen & Cox, 2023</i></div> note: - (quote) - Minor or small tech is a somehow rebellious gesture that addresses the question of scale that is crucial for any discussion of sustainability. 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