The pathway to a Sustainable Information Society

INTRODUCTION The new Information Society Technologies (IST) begin to change our life essentially. Humanity is entering a new era - the age of cyber-space. The new technologies pervade all industrial and societal activities. In particular, IST enable and accelerate economic globalisation and provide citizens, business and industry new products and services as well as new opportunities to access market-places all over the world. But at the beginning of the 21st century we have to accept also that the present consumption of natural resources will bring humankind to the edge of a catastrophe. All over the world insight is growing that we have to undergo fundamental changes to achieve sustainable development. How do these two megatrends, the emerging information society and the growing consciousness for sustainability influence each other? Are there reinforcements or do IST bear the danger of even more resource consumption? And if there are risks, how can we interfere in order to direct IST to a sustainable development? These are the questions which were examined in the work of the ASIS Consortium. The following key statements are flashlights on different aspects of the relation between IST and sustainability and are intended to increase consciousness both for the chances and risks of IST for a sustainable future. With respect to the environment they exhibit a high potential for dematerialisation and almost immaterialisation of economic processes, products and consumption. However, presently the IST are resource-intensive themselves and the so-called rebound effect counteracts dematerialisation. In the social area IST can guarantee social inclusion, for example for elder people and for people with special needs, and can help to preserve and build social and cultural resources. But we must get the whole population into the boat and this depends on the affordability of the equipment. In the economy IST are constituting one of the driving forces of economic globalisation with increasing market share, double digit annual growth rates and increasing employment figures. But they also have increased international speculation to a dangerous extent IMMATERIALISATION IST can help to shift satisfaction of needs to an immaterial level. Immaterialisation opens a new dimension for life. If Information Society Technologies (IST) were to be treated as no more than mechanisms to optimise existing products and systems there would be little hope of reaching a sustainable world, for every advance in eco-efficiency encourages a rebound effect. Increasing the efficiency of automobiles also ultimately increases the sales of automobiles, and thus increases for example CO2 emissions by a corresponding amount. IST offers the hope of breaking out from this spiralling growth of consumption, in that the existence of a complete range of rich communications modes can offer a sustainable alternative to material usage through virtualisation, or immaterialisation. There will be no need to drive to a movie theatre even in a more efficient automobile, no need to fly half way round the world to establish trust with a telework client, and no need for the surgeon to be present at a telerobot operation, if IST can substitute sufficiently well for these activities. Transport substitution however, is but one example of potential substitutions for consumption. In fact, most consumption is not related to material needs (nutrition, say) but to non-material needs (social interaction; the establishment of status and position; the pursuit of sensory excitement and so on): for this portion of consumption, the potential sustainability gain from increasing the eco-efficiency production, is arguably less significant than the potential sustainability gain from the total substitution of the consumption concerned by a virtual simulacrum. The Homes and Workplaces of the Future will use the tools of the Information Society to satisfy non-material needs at least to some extent; maximising that extent represents a key task for the Information Society. Tools such as telepresence have the potential to create new metaphors and new analogues for the satisfaction of non-material needs; on-line communities can sustain not only the use of such tools but also the audiences and peer groups necessary to satisfy many non-material needs. We should realise in this context that non-material needs are only ever satisfied by metaphors and analogues, so that replacing material analogues with non-material analogues does not necessarily imply any compromise in the degree of satisfaction and may indeed be an improvement. The significance of this approach is compounded by awareness that the proportion of all consumption which satisfies non-material needs (and is hence potentially capable of total immaterialisation) is in fact, to be extremely high: of the order of 75% of all global consumption. The sector is also growing much more rapidly (in excess of 20% p.a.) than the material needs sector (which grows at only about 5% p.a.). The topic also can be considered in terms of needs and of satisfiers. Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs", which is well known in sociological discussion, has physiological (i.e. material) needs at its base and self-fulfilment (i.e. non-material) needs at its apex. This basic (and compelling) work was subsequently extended to include the concept of "satisfiers" of needs. Extreme dematerialisation is generally associated with the satisfiers of non-material needs. In the U.K., personal consumption (per capita) doubled in real terms between 1954 and 1994. However, within this average, "material needs satisfiers" only expanded by about 30%, whilst "non-material needs satisfiers" expanded by about 150%. In consequence, it is now the case that the "non-material" portion of consumption is now more than twice the size of the "material" portion and is growing at more than three times the rate (in real terms). These figures if anything seem to underestimate the disparity in that, for example, much expenditure on clothing is not to meet the material needs of protection but rather to meet the non-material needs of expressing status, commitment to design etc etc, but clothing is nevertheless classed within the "material" portion. Assuming that UK figures give at least a rough guide to the shape of western world consumption, then satisfying non-material needs is now the main factor working against sustainability, and far more materials and energy are consumed in satisfying non-material needs than are used in satisfying material needs. (As a further example, in the USA in 1920, the poorest 20% of population spent 70% of income on food clothing and shelter : today that figure is only 45% of income) The manner in which IST can satisfy non-material needs has two elements, the sensory and the cognitive. The relationship between these and particularly their significance in the development of telepresence and augmented reality is the subject of current work which is highly promising but as yet not fully developed. INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND THE REBOUND EFFECT Sustainable development needs both, global and regional systems of governance in the major social, environmental and economic areas. Here, IST can significantly contribute to the efficient, flexible and democratic management of such governance systems. Investments in education, media competence and social systems as well as an adequate share of national income for all citizen (the topic of equity) are necessary to slow down world-wide population growth which is one of the major threats to global sustainability. In order to avoid future economic and social breakdowns it is in the own interest of the developed countries to invest in social systems and IST infrastructure of developing countries. Suitable systems for financing such investments are tradable pollution rights or other systems that use economic incentives based on environmental and/or social considerations. The European Union could spearhead the search for adequate global and regional governance systems for a sustainable Information Society, strengthen thereby its IST sector while simultaneously promoting its social and environmental achievements world-wide. The objectives can be achieved only if substantial co-financing by developed regions of social systems and infrastructure in developing regions are taking place. This holds also if the sole interest of developed regions would be their own survival (without a major global disaster at the expected population peak of 10 billion people or more somewhere in the middle of the 21st century). Sustainability in the environmental field is reached if critical indicators are staying within the agreed upon limits. Up to now the main problems for sustainability in the environmental field are generated by North America, Europe and Japan (the "North"). This concerns not only their share of global resource consumption but also the setting of examples for similar lifestyles in the developing countries (the "South"). However, when looking into the future we have to note that a major part of additional environmental burden will arise from developments in the South, in particular from South and South-East Asia (India, Indonesia etc.), Central-East Asia (China), Africa and Latin America. In these regions we often have a critical mix of high population growth rates, high economic growth and low resource efficiencies due to low industry standards. The result will be a highly unsustainable growth of resource consumption and environmental burden which will aggravate world-wide environmental problems.

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