2024-09-28, 13:30–14:00 (Europe/Zurich), Main Stage
When considering sustainability and digitality, the focus often falls on the extractive practices for rare resources and the power consumption of data centers, streaming services, and AI compute. While acknowledging these issues, it’s also crucial to consider how digitality and our own practices can support sustainability goals. The evolving concept of digital sustainability provides criteria and guidelines for positive digital practices.
This presentation will explore what digital sustainability is and how digital practices can align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), complementing the ecological view that focuses on the resource demands of digital technologies. Digital sustainability extends beyond immediate environmental impacts to consider how digital tools can foster innovation, improve education, and increase access to information, all critical for sustainable development. By examining the intersections between digitality and sustainability, the talk will highlight the pivotal roles individuals and higher education institutions (HEIs) can play in advancing digital sustainability.
The talk will trace the emergence of digital sustainability as a concept and its relationship to open source software, open data, and the commons. It will also ask how higher education institutions can integrate digital sustainability into their curricula, research, and operations, and how individuals can support these goals through their digital practices. By rethinking our approach to digital technologies, we can enhance our sustainability efforts and inspire participants to contribute to a more sustainable future.
Birk Weiberg is Project Head for Interdisciplinarity and Transformation and Lecturer in the program Data Design + Art at the Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art. He studied Art History, Media Arts, and Philosophy at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and the Humboldt University of Berlin and gained a doctorate from the University of Zurich with a dissertation on the history of optical effects in Hollywood. He worked at the Zurich University of the Arts and Foundation SAPA, Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts.