Sustainable Digital Environments: What Major Challenges Is Humankind Facing?

Abstract

This paper identifies and discusses the benefits, threats, and vulnerabilities related to the digital revolution. It aims to motivate research and its funding regarding digital threats and vulnerabilities related, in particular, to anticipating unintended, undesirable rebound effects, tipping points, critically fast evolutionary change rates, trade-offs, etc. A brief analysis of the history of the mind and technology reveals slow technological development over tens of thousands of years (including the invention of a place-value digital number system). Then, a small series of groundbreaking ideas (e.g., binary logic, Shannon's symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits, architectures of computing) enabled the industry-driven invention of programmable computing machines. Ultimately, the mastery of electron and semiconductor physics allowed for economical and seemingly unlimited storage capacity that made digital tools available to all domains of society. Based on the historical analysis, a coupled human-environment systems perspective (that includes a hierarchy assumption ranging from the human cell to the human species) enables the identification of several potential challenges to society and science. First, digital nano-engineering promotes genetic modifications (i.e., directed evolution), and synthetic biology enables a new level of the appropriation of nature. The understanding of cell-based biocomputers may call for new forms of logic. These and other challenges require thorough sustainability research in order to anticipate major changes on all levels of human systems. Second, the human individual is exposed to new forms of vulnerability. In particular, the potential epigenetic effects resulting from the excessive use of digital information of historically unknown speed, density, and contents and the loss of (the Western common-law right to) privacy resulting from big data (whose ownership is often unknown) should become subjects of research. Third, digital technologies are responsible for rapid changes in all social and economic structures. The paper suggests that thorough, discipline-based interdisciplinary research is needed in order to develop basic knowledge for creating and managing resilient relationships between human systems and their digital environments.Keywords: digital revolution; digital threats; rebound effects; genetically modified organisms (GMO); cell-based computers; cell-based computing; environmental epigenetics; loss of privacy; appropriation of nature Why Do Digital Environments Call for Special Attention? The Social Dimension of the Digital Revolution Is Not Yet Well UnderstoodThe development of Homo sapiens and human societies is characterized by a couple of fundamental transitions. The present paper starts from the proposition that, phylogenetically and historically, many impacts linked to the emergence of digital environments (E D ) have the same gravity as the mastery of fire, the development of speech, the invention of agrotechnology, and the Industrial Revolutio...

Digital Threat and Vulnerability Management: The SVIDT Method

“…Scholz [8] argues that digital technology heralds a new, historically unknown stage of the appropriation of nature. He stresses that large-scale and potentially unintended and unwanted side effects or secondary feedback loops (also called rebound effects) of the use of digital technology should become the focus of research programs.…”

“…There are theoretical arguments (see [8]) that excessive exposure to information and stimuli from digital media may have epigenetic effects or may have the potential to alter brain structure in certain users. The putative reason for this potential involves the intense exposure to new types and (as yet unknown) speeds and informational content (which may also induce Internet addiction [9,10]).…”

“…From a history of knowledge and science perspective (see [8]), there are few key inventions of the mind (such as the place value of numbers, Boolean algebra, and simulation by smart algorithms) or breakthroughs in technological developments (such as the mastery of the electron that launched the creation of E D ) that may store, process, retrieve, and network seemingly unlimited amounts of digital information with tremendous speed that may be used independently of any geographic constraints. From an evolutionary perspective, the mastery of cell processes by digital technology (including genetically modified organisms and biocomputers), the tremendous amount of storage (including retrieval and processing), and real-time global networking herald a new level of evolution.…”

“…Currently, in a final step, the operationalizing of Internet censorship of foreign online gambling providers is discussed [95]. The case is related to major digital threats such as Internet addiction [8,96]. From the perspective of digital threats, protecting gamblers from the addictive and putative epigenetic impacts linked to Internet gaming is a key issue in this complex legislative draft.…”

“…One example of this is the manipulation of DNA, which is mostly conceived as a genuine digital construct (if the folding of the DNA, which usually is conceived to be analog, is ignored). Digital technology allows for directed evolution (e.g., the genetic manipulation of seeds) that may result in unwanted side effects and feedback loops (for references and an explanation, see [8]). The same holds true for the ongoing development toward the integration of living cells in computers.…”