The OFF! ProgramICT4S 2023

The unsustainable growth of the digital environmental footprint over the last decade is due to the rapid growth of digital “volumes”, which have outpaced efficiency gains. This growth is a result of the business models of the dominant players of the digital economy, namely the largest digital platforms (GAFAM, BATX) and their derivatives (Netflix, TikTok etc.). To make digitalization sustainable, a transition away from these digital superpowers is necessary, and alternative, sustainable business models must be adopted. The initiation and acceleration of this transition requires the implementation of appropriate public policies that will reduce the attractiveness of current Big Tech business models and promote and support the development of a new digital economy.

Biography

Polytechnician, Engineer from the Corps des Mines and a graduate of Télécom ParisTech, Hugues Ferreboeuf has held several senior management positions in subsidiaries and business units within the France Telecom Orange Group. He then led an international double career in management, as an entrepreneur and consultant. He has been at the head of the Banking and Finance sector of the British Telecom Group, where he was involved in numerous digital transition projects. He then got specialized in the management of transitions (energy, digital, generational) and, since 2017, he steers the “Lean ICT” project for the Shift since 2017, at the crossroads between digital and energy transitions.

POST GROWTH PROTOTYPES / Performative Lecture

This lecture/performance is an invitation to a collective and practical examination of our shared future, examining the notion of growth,in its many facets and implications, testing the limits of technology, of politics, and of ourimaginations.

With their series of new artworks, the DISNOVATION.ORG collective invites us to challenge concepts of growth and progress and explore the radical implications of speculative artistic prototypes, such as an economic model based on the energy emitted by the Sun. This research encounters the vital challenges of a shift away from the overexploitation of fossil fuels on which the reproduction of our societies mainly depends today.

How long can we continue pursuing economic growth? What ideological, social, and biophysical factors precipitate the current environmental crises? What agency is available for transformative practices and imaginaries to avert large-scale ecosystemic breakdown?

Biography

DISNOVATION.ORG is a research collective set up in Paris in 2012, whose core members include Maria Roszkowska (PL/FR), Nicolas Maigret (FR), and Baruch Gottlieb (CA). They work at the interface between contemporary art, research, and hacking, and compose tailor-made teams for each investigation together with academics, activists, engineers, and designers. More specifically their recent artistic provocations seek to empower Post Growth imaginaries and practices by challenging the widespread faith that ‘economic growth’ and ‘technological fixes’ will solve the ecosystemic disruptions they produced in the first place. They recently co-edited A Bestiary of the Anthropocene with Nicolas Nova, an atlas of anthropic hybrid creatures, and The Pirate Book, an anthology on media piracy.

If nothing was done to manage the increase of the greenhouse effect tied to human activity, we should see, at the end of this century, a minimum average 4 °C increase in temperature worldwide which will increase well beyond 2100. The impacts of such a « business as usual » scenario would be difficult if not impossible to handle. And these difficulties will hold true for a +3 °C climate change a level which could be reached in the current context of the Paris agreement. After briefly examining the causes and consequences of this ongoing global warming in the light of recent IPCC reports, we will conclude on the absolute need to keep global warming well below 2°C, and much better around 1.5°C, if we want today young generations be able to adapt to future climate change in the second part of this century and beyond. We will argue that research, innovation and creativity are essential for going towards this low carbon society but that this « ecological transition » also requires large dedicated teaching efforts in higher education and all along our life.

Biography

Prof. Jean Jouzel is a prominent French glaciologist and climatologist and a former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has mainly worked on the reconstruction of past climate derived from the study of the Antarctic and Greenland ice. He is internationally recognised for his research on climate change, and has received numerous scientific awards, including the CNRS Gold Medal (the highest scientific award in France) and the Vetlesen Prize (considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for the Earth Sciences). He is also a member of the French, Italian, European, American and Australian Academies of Science.