A glitched screen
Credit: Michael Dziedzic for Unsplash

We are exposing the environmental impacts and social inequalities posed by digital technologies and screen cultural practices.

Technology and Democracy: two sociocultural paradigms the tensions and harmonies of which will define the human endeavour of the twenty-first century.

And yet, both of these, as concept and as practice, are fully contingent upon the environment.

Though sparked by human ingenuity, digital technologies are built from the mineral resources and run on the energies of the wider natural world.

Though digital technologies may help us understand, navigate, and at times even protect facets of that natural world, they also contribute deeply to environmental destabilisation.

Democracy is in essence a politic of the commons, though to this point we have done little to include the entirety of this complex living ecosystem we call “Earth” into the tenets of its policy.

“The environmental initiative at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy will focus on policy-oriented research and public-facing scholarship, to help shape the future of tech industry practice and popular understanding.”

As part of a larger shift in interdisciplinary scholarship and policy building at the intersection of technology, social equality, and the environment, the environmental initiative at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy is committed to addressing the environmental impacts and social inequalities posed by digital technologies and screen cultural practices, on local and global scales.

This includes a range of potential topics such as:

– Resource use and labour lines across the life cycle of digital devices and infrastructures

– The energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions of information communication technologies (ICT);

– Environmental and science communication studies of public engagement, in relation to new forms of outreach and storytelling;

– Potential capacity building at the intersection of communication equity, renewable energy futures, and coastal resilience;

– Greenwashing and environmental corporate branding among tech and media industries amidst rapidly expanding infrastructure growth and content creation;

– The role of creative industries and pop-culture celebrity in shaping environmental values

The environmental initiative at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy will focus on policy-oriented research and public-facing scholarship, to help shape the future of tech industry practice and popular understanding.

In order to integrate an environmental directive and set of environmental facets into the Centre’s mission, we are also incorporating a regular reading group to keep pace with major texts in the vanguard of the field, and will be arranging larger public talks spotlighting leaders at this intersection.