Month: October 2021

Digital for Life?

View of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau from small tarn above Grosse Scheidegg

It was a privilege to have been invited to contribute to the panel on Digital for Life? at the Club of Rome’s annual conference today along with luminaries such as Carlos Álvarez Pereira, Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Anders Wijkman, Charly Kleissner, Mariana Bozesan and Bolaji Akinboro. I fear, though, that my perspective was a little different from that of many of the panelists who were from a business, financial and entrepreneurial background. It was also challenging to convey the nuances of what I had intended to say in my opening 4 minutes!

So, for anyone who might be interested, I’m posting my speaking notes here. At least, this is more or less what I had intended to say!

Digital for Life?

I think of two things when presented with this question:

  • First, that many of those developing digital technologies and indeed in the biotech sector more widely are working hard to extend human life through digital tech.  The work of Calico (subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company) and Elon Musk’s creation of Neuralink are just two examples (claiming that “that people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in an artificial intelligence age. He said that a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence” would be necessary to ensure we stay economically valuable”, Guardian, 2017).   More widely, the increasing blending of human and digital makes me think that within a relatively short period of time, perhaps already, it will not be possible for “pure humans” to survive, in a world increasingly dominated by cyborgs. For many this does not matter; for others (including me) it does. We need to think such thoughts so that we can debate them openly, thereby enabling people to reach wise judgements as to the kinds of future “we” wish to create.  This in turn of course depends on who “we” are, and here I would err on the side of relativism and diversity.  I find one single universal “we” frightening; just as I do the idea of universal individual human rights, without the balancing necessary responsibilities to ensure that diverse individuals can live side-by-side (see Unwin, 2014).
  • The second idea I would like to share is that digital technologies are becoming increasingly harmful to life (of all kinds) on planet earth.  We need to understand the negatives of technology on nature/earth/the physical environment, as well as the positive potential of its use. This is obviously important in the context of the upcoming COP26 jamboree.  Although much effort has been expended on trying to show how digital tech is squeeky-green-clean and can contribute much to a reduction in CO2 and thus “save the planet from climate change”, the truth is much dirtier.  Increasing research shows just how anti-sustainable many digital techs are: fast fashion business models (smart-phone life/owned span around a couple of years); companies preventing right to repair; environmentally harmful mining of rare-earth minerals; bitcoin using more energy than Argentina or the Netherlands; satellite pollution of outer space (akin to the way we used to treat the oceans); digital tech creating twice as much carbon emissions as the airline industry; and energy demand spiralling upwards as 5G, AI, smart cities and a world of sensors come to dominate our lives.  The Digital-Environment System Coalition (DESC) that I founded earlier this year, and to which anyone is most welcome to join, is committed to rethinking the relationships between digital tech and the life of nature, focusing on both the benefits and the harms that it can be used to create.
Page one of the participants

We had a fascinating, albeit attenuated, discussion and I look forward to continuing the exploration. I have much to learn from what others think and say. These are critically important issues if we wish to leave a better world to the next generation, and not have it transformed irrevocably by the scientism of those creating ever more enslaving and destructive digital technologies.

Rural-urban interaction: wind turbines as a form of surplus extraction

Back in the late-1980s Robert Potter and I edited a book called The Geography of Urban-Rutal Interactions in Developing Countries (Routledge, 1989; recently republished in the Routledge Library Editions: Urbanization) as a festschrift for our colleague Alan Mountjoy who had retired in 1985. My introductory conceptual chapter summarised various theories that had by then been developed to explain and help understand the ways through which people interacted between these very different kinds of places, the “rural” and the “urban”. It also proposed a framework for new thinking about these issues that focused on linkages (economic, social, political and ideological), flows (such as labour, money, telephone calls, authority and ideas) and interactions (involving things such as capital, families, allegiance and religious activities). The book was a product of its time, and much has changed over the last 35 years – although I am glad to see that I did indeed write about telephones, radios and televisions even back then.

Crossing northern France last weekend reminded me of those arguments, as I saw kilometre upon kilometre of wind turbines stretching across the vast expanses of the farmland of the pays champenois. Some people find these turbines inspiring and beautiful; I do not! However, no-one can deny that they have changed the landscape. What struck me most, though, was that this was yet another very visible, powerful and extensive form of exploition of “the rural” by “the urban”. Little of the energy produced by these turbines will be used in the rural areas where they are situated; their presence reflects the powerful urban demand for electricity, and the imposition of an essentially urban bourgeois ideology that wants to maintain its “culture” with little real regard for the rural environment. The rural is out of sight, out of mind; it is there to be exploited.

There have been numerous studies of the environmental impact of different kinds of energy, but many of these are based on traditional forms of analyses that tend to have an inbuilt prioritisation of the interests of those living in urban areas, and almost always ignore the environmental values of “indigenous peoples” and ethnic minorities. Moreover, insufficient work has yet been done on the environmental impact of the decommissioning of wind turbines, most of which have a lifespan of less than 25 years, and are currently disposed of in landfill sites. With rising demand for electricity, driven in large part by the expansion in the use of digital technologies (see the work of DESC), there will be a dramatic increase in the number of such windfarms, and thus yet further surplus extraction of “the rural” by the “urban”.

Further north in the Nord-Pas de Calais coal mining basin (since 2012 a UNESCO World Heritage Site) it is still possible to see many of the old spoil tips. As elsewhere in the world’s coalmining regions, there has been much landscape reconstruction. Some old tips have been flattened, others have been wooded, and at least one has been turned into a dry ski slope. However, I couldn’t help but think that the despoliation of the rural landscape (and indeed seascapes) by wind turbines in Europe is likely to be very much more extensive than that caused in the past by coal mining. How, though, do we judge and evaluate such thoughts? It is time for a very considerable rethink about the environmental impacts of all forms of energy, especially in the context of the rapid growth in digital technologies. After all, does not the term “Smart Cities” automatically imply that “villages must therefore be dumb”?