Digital sustainability? Potentialities and pitfalls of digitally-supported ecological transition in Europe

The association between digitalization and sustainability has been promoted by international organisations and the EU institutions under the auspice that dematerialisation, disintermediation, and virtualisation of social reproduction processes can lighten our ecological footprint. We know today that sustainability presents a multidimensional character and requires a balance between environmental protection and social measures supporting democratization, cohesion, and justice. Whether digitalisation is serving the environmental cause is questionable as this may produce both progressive and regressive implications in terms of ecological sustainability or social justice. Underestimating these challenges might threaten the achievement of transition goals. We want to stimulate collective critical thinking on the sustainability of the the production, distribution, use, and disposal cycle of digi-tech to detect where this affect the socio-environmental supporting system and generate polarised power geometries, and novel social inequities