Tag: Technology

Posted on

Green AI Beyond Bullsh*t

tl;dr: Green AI can only matter if it moves beyond hype—toward truth, transparency, and regeneration within planetary limits.

Over the past months, hardly a day has passed without headlines about artificial intelligence: new models, astonishing breakthroughs, and dire warnings. At conferences, in boardrooms, and in policy debates, AI has become a kind of secular promise—of productivity, control, even salvation. And increasingly, it comes wrapped in a green label. That convergence between sustainability and digital technology is fascinating, but also deeply ambivalent.… Read more

Posted on

Electric Avenue: Systems, Sufficiency, and European Sovereignty

tl;dr:  Europe’s agency hinges on becoming an Electrostate—electrified value chains, robust grids, high domestic electrification. Not more tech, but system design & sufficiency.

What an Electrostate Is

An Electrostate is not simply a country with many wind turbines and solar parks. It is a polity whose power rests on electrified value chains—from critical minerals and battery chemistry to power electronics, grids, software, and open standards—combined with high domestic electrification in mobility, heat, and industry.… Read more

Posted on

Sustainable and/or Digital? Compendium on Digital Sustainability

tl;dr: Compendium of my research on Sustainability and the Digital Transformation

When Megatrends Collide

Sustainability is the great challenge for humanity in the 21st century: how to organize economic, political, and social systems in a way that planetary boundaries and the viability of global as well as local ecosystems can be maintained for all posterity. It is an inherently political (i.e. contested, conflict-laden) as well as social (i.e. global justice and fairness across generations) question. We are facing this from a position of fundamental un-sustainabilities and are in search for the right path ahead.… Read more

Posted on

Artificial Intelligence as Convivial Technology

tl;dr: Artificial Intelligence research needs to focus on enriching people’s relation to each other, empower them to organise their life beyond the market, and assist in the transformation towards sustainability

Technology is never neutral. It transforms the world, our perceptions of it, and our relations towards one another in a fundamental way. Artificial Intelligence (AI) as technology, as a technological paradigm, as specific applications of machine (self-)learning as well as automation of highly cognitive decision routines, raises questions if we should use it, how we should use it, and what happens then.… Read more

Posted on

Publication on Digital Sustainability

tl;dr: The digital economy needs Sustainability as a normative reference frame

My recent article has been published (in German) in the Yearbook on “Sustainable Economics”. In it I am reconstructing digitalization as a social phenomenon while applying social practice theory, while at the same time focusing on the material underbelly of digital technologies. My main argument: the digital economy is not a pathway to a more sustainable economy unless Sustainability is set as a clear normative reference frame.… Read more