Smart Green World – Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability: Release of the Revised Book in English Language
In their book „Smart Green World“, Steffen Lange and Tilman Santarius investigate how digitalization influences environmental and social sustainability. The information revolution is currently changing the daily lives of billions of people worldwide. At the same time, the current economic model and consumerist lifestyle needs to be radically transformed if society is to overcome the challenges humanity is facing on a finite planet. Can the much-discussed disruption potential of digitalization be harnessed for this purpose? The book is published in May 2020 and is result of the projekt „Digitalization and socio-economic Transformation“.
Mobility, Industry, AI: The Book Provides Proposals and Guiding Principles
Smart Green World? provides guiding principles for a sustainable digital society and develops numerous hands-on proposals for how digitalization can be shaped to become a driving force for social transformation. For instance, the authors explain why a certain digitalization is needed to realize the transition towards 100% renewable energy and show how this can be achieved without sacrificing privacy.
„Steffen Lange and Tilman Santarius Distil Key Insights to Answer the Big Question“
In the foreword Barbara Unmüßig emphasizes that „the authors are excellently equipped to tackle such a comprehensive analysis“. Lange and Santarius analyze how the information revolution can transform consumption patterns, mobility habits and industry structures towards sustainability – instead of fostering the consumption of unneeded stuff due to personalized commercials and the acceleration of life. The authors reveal how Artificial Intelligence and the Industrial Internet of Things pose novel environmental challenges and contribute to a polarization of income; but they also demonstrate how the internet can be restored to its status as a commons, with users taking priority and society at large reaping the benefits of technological change in a most democratic way.
Providing a comprehensive and practical assessment of both opportunities and challenges of digitalization, Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability will be of great interest to all those studying the complex interrelationship of the twenty-first-century megatrends of digitalization and decarbonization.
Digitalization and Socio-Economic Transformation
The book was originally published in German in February 2018 and is one result of the project „Digitalization & socio-economic Transformation“. The project is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework of socio-ecological research (SÖF) over a period of five years (2016-2021). The translation and revision of the book was financed by Heinrich Böll Stiftung – The Green Political Foundation.
Find out more:
www.nachhaltige-digitalisierung.de
www.sustainable-digitalization.org
Bibliographic data:
Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius: Smart Green World? – Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability. 186 Pages, Published May 20, 2020 by Routledge, 1st Edition. ISBN 9780367467579.