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4 principles for a sustainable digital society

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4 principles for a sustainable digital society
SFScon 2021

Designing a circular digitisation with the upcycling of software and reuse of hardware

Smart phones, smart homes, smart cities, smart farming … the number of connected devices is exponentially growing, yet is still far away from its peak. Every five years we produce more smartphones than there are humans on the planet. Confronted with climate change and the problem that any new electronic and smart device is produced in an energy intense process and with the consumption of rare resources, it is long time overdue to find a more sustainable growth of our digitisation. Time to transform the Internet of linear things into the one of reusable devices!

The talk explores four principles that any further digitisation shall be based on to move into a more sustainable digital society. It gives concrete advise how politicians nowadays can use these findings and apply simple directives that will allow the circular use and upcycling of software, extend lifetime and reusability of our hardware.

Speakers: Erik Albers