Abstract
We present the main messages of a European Expert Round Table (ERT) on the unintended side effects (unseens) of the digital transition. Seventeen experts provided 42 propositions from ten different perspectives as input for the ERT. A full-day ERT deliberated communalities and relationships among these unseens and provided suggestions on (i) what the major unseens are; (ii) how rebound effects of digital transitioning may become the subject of overarching research; and (iii) what unseens should become subjects of transdisciplinary theory and practice processes for developing socially robust orientations. With respect to the latter, the experts suggested that the “ownership, economic value, use and access of data” and, related to this, algorithmic decision-making call for transdisciplinary processes that may provide guidelines for key stakeholder groups on how the responsible use of digital data can be developed. A cluster-based content analysis of the propositions, the discussion and inputs of the ERT, and a theoretical analysis of major changes to levels of human systems and the human–environment relationship resulted in the following greater picture: The digital transition calls for redefining economy, labor, democracy, and humanity. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based machines may take over major domains of human labor, reorganize supply chains, induce platform economics, and reshape the participation of economic actors in the value chain. (Digital) Knowledge and data supplement capital, labor, and natural resources as major economic variables. Digital data and technologies lead to a post-fuel industry (post-) capitalism. Traditional democratic processes can be (intentionally or unintentionally) altered by digital technologies. The unseens in this field call for special attention, research and management. Related to the conditions of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development (humanity), the ubiquitous, global, increasingly AI-shaped interlinkage of almost every human personal, social, and economic activity and the exposure to indirect, digital, artificial, fragmented, electronically mediated data affect behavioral, cognitive, psycho-neuro-endocrinological processes on the level of the individual and thus social relations (of groups and families) and culture, and thereby, the essential quality and character of the human being (i.e., humanity). The findings suggest a need for a new field of research, i.e., focusing on sustainable digital societies and environments, in which the identification, analysis, and management of vulnerabilities and unseens emerging in the sociotechnical digital transition play an important role.
Highlights
The experts argued that the Japanese prefer embodied, humanoid robots, whereas Christian principles of resurrection and salvation allow for the appreciation of nonhumanoid robots
Several propositions provided by Scholz and Sugiyama refer to biotech
The results from the pinboards are an interfacial element between the Propositions and the Main messages that were composed directly after the Expert Round Table (ERT)
Summary
Identifying Unintended Side Effects of Digital Transitioning as Objectives of Proposition-Based Expert Round Tables (ERTs) on Sustainable Digital Environments. The unseen was the consequential reduction of nutrients and, thereby, of the harvest This unseen was compensated (mitigated) by the invention of fertilizing or other means (such slash and burn agriculture which may be conceived as adaptation). The goal of these Expert Round Table (ERT) was (launched by the first author) to increase awareness among the science community that the digital transitioning (including the digital divide) is a core issues of sustainable science. A transdisciplinary process [28,29,30], is a knowledge-integration-based, real-world, problem-oriented discourse including representatives from all key stakeholder groups that is intended to generate socially robust orientations on critical issues of sustainable development [28,29]. The facilitation of the adaptation and/or the mitigation process for those who cannot benefit from the desired advantages of digital transitioning may become the subject of a transdisciplinary process related to the Digital Revolution
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