Catching Up Our Thinking with Our Living
Fifty years since sustainability became a neologism for long-term societal durability, and thirty years since it was formalized with the publication of the Brundtland Commissionâs report Our Common Future (1987), it is safe to say that sustainability is not a fad. Despite early concerns and detractions,1 the term has not only caught on, but can now be seen gracing a variety of government units, academic programs, business practices, professional networks, and organizations of all stripes and colors. From a concept that was meant to call attention to the grotesque absurdity and latent death-drive of growth economics, the embodiment of a âfrontiers worldview,â as Johan Rockström (2015) puts it, sustainability has become a rallying cry for a social movement whose goal is to reimagine, reconfigure, and remake (the new âthree Râsâ!) modern society.
As sustainability gained scientific traction and cultural cachet, it became apparent that both its meaning and its prospects were entangled with technology. Is this merely poetic retribution for an original sin, the proverbial technological chickens coming home to roost? After all, sustainability appears to be our best hope for solving an ecological crisis that resulted from the material processes, outcomes, and mindset associated with modern technology. While it may be debatable whether the seeds of the Anthropocene, a term meant to draw attention to the extent to which human activity is influencing the planetâs geological processes, were already sown with the emergence of Homo Faber, with the development of ancient agriculture over 10,000 years ago, with the global intermingling of species that took place at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or with the industrial acceleration that took place in the 1960s (Lewis and Maslin 2015), there is little doubt that a direct path leads from the mass development and use of fossil-fueled industrial manufacturing to global climate change (IPCC 2015). This path was paved by a particular way of seeing the world as a growth-oriented machine, an ontological perspective that itself co-emerged with modern science and technology (Dijksterhuis 1961; Kumar 1978; Leiss 1972; Merchant 1989). As JosĂ© Ortega y Gasset (1941) suggests, âThe history of human thinking may be regarded as a long series of observations made to discover what latent possibilities the world offers for the construction of machinesâŠ. man begins where technology beginsâ (pp. 116â117). However, the entanglement of sustainability and technology reflects more than the ecological legacy of the Industrial Revolution. The roots of the entanglement may lie in the past, but its crown faces the future. This is because the field of activity represented by sustainability will certainly demand even more technological innovation and deployment. As scientists and economists tell us, a thorough decarbonization of the world economy will require investment in renewable energy, energy-efficient âsmartâ infrastructure, new ways to grow and transport food, smarter land-use practices, and new processes of industrial production (Figueres et al. 2017)âall necessitating various degrees of technological design and production. In this sense, to paraphrase German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1977), technology is both the âdangerâ of unsustainability and the âsaving powerâ for a more sustainable future.
Claims that technology and sustainability are entangled, or that âsustainable interactive technologyâ is a paradoxical construction (Hazas and Nathan 2018a), may be true, but do little to illustrate the ways in which such an entanglement takes place. The issue is further complicated by two important factors: first, it is not always clear what we are talking about when we talk about âsustainabilityâ (more on that below), or what we are referring to by âtechnology.â The latter, in particular, conjures an expansive field of materials, artifacts, practices, ways of thinking, and ways of beingâboth a more general âactivity formâ and a set of particular technologies (McGinn 1990). While theorizations of technology in more general terms inform the ideas presented here, this book concerns new interactive technologies, sometimes referred to as information technology (IT), information and communication technology (ICT), digital media, interactive media, or simply, new media (despite the slight differences in emphasis each of these terms signal, they will be used here interchangeably). New media are practically everywhere: they are in our homes and in our cars, in our pockets and on our wrists. We use them to inquire, locate, share, and keep in touch. They compel us to take note and they nudge us to act. They influence our wants, dreams, and desiresâdesires that are often evoked and stoked in ways that only the media themselves can satisfy. New media are a fixture of our social imaginaries, part and parcel of how we see ourselves, others, and the world. And as I will argue here, new media have become inseparable from what sustainability means to us and, no less important, what it may mean in the future.
A second complication arises from the breathtaking pace of technological change. As soon as we start to grasp the implications of a new technology, a newer one appears on the horizon, deeming analytical efforts to a perpetual game of tag. The gap between sociotechnical praxis and reflection has long occupied the thought of critical technology scholars from Marx to Marcuse , Heidegger to Ellul, and it is eloquently captured in Marshall McLuhanâs remark that âWe are always living a way ahead of our thinking.â2 McLuhanâs penchant for aphorisms notwithstanding, his point is as true today as it was when he made it in 1965. If anything, the velocity of our technological trajectory, accelerated by the volume of time, energy, and resources invested in its growth, makes it almost impossible to anticipate the entire gamut of implications introduced by new technologies. Even those we consider technology leaders often fail in their prognostications. IBMâs president Thomas Watson has famously predicted in 1943 that there was a âworld market for maybe five computersâ (Pogue 2012, Jan. 18), and Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, stated in 1977 that âThere is no reason anyone would want a computer in their homeâ (Skarda 2011, Oct. 21). Venerable publications such as MITâs Technology Review have not done much better (Funk 2017). Setting aside modern technologyâs uncanny ability to turn erudite predictions on their head, every analysis of technology is firmly located in the time and place of its origin. Much like its subject, technological critique is situated and contingent, and what follows on these pages is no exception.
As strong as our anxieties over intellectual obsolescence may be, the pace of technological innovation should not deter but invite critical reflection. As we stand on the threshold of what has been dubbed the âfourth industrial revolutionâ (Schwab 2017), the future appears to be bursting with new technological possibilities and, doubtlessly, threats. Artificially intelligent agents and smart, interconnected objects, cancer-fighting nanobots, and autonomous vehicles, all promise new ways for improving the human condition while reducing humanityâs ecological toll. But if we are about to inhabit a world in which the boundaries between the physical, the digital, and the biological blur beyond recognition, as Schwab (2017) forecasts, now would be an opportune moment to reflect, assess, and reorient technological innovation. In other words, if our thinking is to ever catch up with our living, we need to be able to identify both the fleeting and the enduring in technology, that which constantly changes as result of new materials, techniques, and applications, and that which orients technological design and use throughout. This is as relevant for sustainability as it is for any other field of human endeavor. Which social interests, values, and objectives will inform the design of future interactive t...