Towards a sustainable information society (Apr. 12)

Corporate social responsibility is, perhaps worryingly, a recent trend. I say worryingly, because it implies that being socially responsible is a recent recognition and it suggests that it may fade away. This "trend" is connected to another potential fad: sustainability. In both cases the matter is fundamental for society, because the point is that corporations should be socially responsible and strive for sustainability of their company and of the world at large. Of course, common sense dictates that this should be the norm. However, traditionally the problem has been that sustainability and social responsibility have often been seen as opposed to profit. In other words, a company can either act responsibly or make a profit. ICT enters the picture because some believe that it enables companies to be more effective in striving for both social responsibility and sustainability. But, as we know by now, ICT is usually a double-edged sword and its effects do not necessarily have a positive impact.

In Fuchs (2008) paper most of the myths surrounding the benefit of ICT for sustainability are debunked. Some still believe that ICT enables people to get in touch without the need for physically transporting themselves: this should reduce transport-related CO2 emissions. However, the fact is that telework has actually grown together with transportation requirements (not against it). A teleworker on average makes more trips to visit clients than an office worker, so commuting increases. In addition, the Internet helps us get in touch with old friends or create new social ties which increase our desire or need to make (longer) trips, which is aided by the fact that travel itself is made easier by the Internet (booking a cheaper trip, making plans, finding out requirements, getting tourism information, etc.). Another myth is that the post-industrial economy is a weightless one (as when Negroponte suggested a shift from atoms to bits in his 1995 book, Being Digital), which would imply a reduction in physical trade and thus CO2 emissions. This is far from the truth. To begin with, e-commerce platforms originally supported the buying and selling of tangible goods (from books and CDs to clothing and collectibles) which rather than being weightless, only worsened the problem, because it opened up the market from farther away, implying longer travel distances and often in small quantities (even today if I order a book from Amazon it will probably go through at least four different cities before reaching me). But the real omission is that the digital age by no means replaces the "old" economy, it only adds to it, or in Touraine's words rather than post-industrial, it becomes hyper-industrial (e.g. rather than saving paper we now have more to print and faster ways to do it). We have already observed that globalized capitalism is intertwined with ICT and this means, for instance, that traditional clothing brands which were usually produced and sold in Colombia are now produced in China and sold all over the world, increasing CO2 emissions. In any case, the fact remains that fossil fuels are still by far the energy behind modern industrial economies (with no signs of slowing down, except due to their exhaustion - peak oil, for instance) and the single largest contributor to material outflows (pollution). ICT itself, as an industry, is very resource intensive (and rapidly growing in terms of energy consumption through increased usage) and the fact that digital devices have a low life span only increases the amount of waste generated. This doesn't mean that ICT cannot result in benefits for sustainability. Despite the fact that it is still limited, ICT enables the distribution and sharing of information to increase ecological awareness and helps support the organization and deployment of environmental activism (which has led to actual results in terms of halting polluting enterprises or forcing a change in policy). This may be labeled as environmental informatics (coupled with cyberprotest) but its reach is still not widespread nor enough to contain or counterbalance unsustainable human activity...yet. For starters, the role of ICT with respect to sustainability needs to encompass not just ecological sustainability, but also technological, economic, political and cultural aspects.

The key point remains, however, there is still a widely held dichotomy between profit and sustainability. What is required is an explicit distinction between profit-pursuing and profit-maximizing. Profit making is legitimate and actually needed for sustainability, but the logic changes completely when it is led by profit-maximizing, because the latter implies stronger trade-offs where profit always takes precedence over people and planet. Hence the recent calls for a "triple bottom-line" of people, planet and profit (though it is still unclear whether they are truly given the same weight, or whether indeed people and planet should come before profit as sustainability would imply). For this to happen corporations need to embrace corporate social responsibility not as an appendix which they need to comply with (something they usually due by outsourcing their corporate social responsibility program!) but as a compromise which may (and in most cases should) lead to a critical examination of their business model and bottom line. This is because traditional business models are built under the profit-maximizing logic of capitalism and if this is not placed under scrutiny then real sustainability can hardly be achieved.

With respect to the ICT industry, this dichotomy permeates business models when the choice is between open or proprietary modes of production. In Busch (2010) the hypothesis is that open modes of production are more ethical and hence required of a corporate citizen (corporate citizenship is a term closely related to corporate social responsibility). On one end of the spectrum are the defenders of strong protection of intellectual property, who argue that this guarantees innovation and efficiency in the long run . On the other end of the spectrum lies the "free" alternative, where the argument is that open and free sharing of knowledge is at the basis of human good will and fosters a sustainable, inclusive society. Both positions, in Bush, are seen as libertarian, but not aimed at freedom in the liberal sense, because they refer to an arbitrary freedom and not a generalized and inclusive freedom. A more nuanced open alternative is one where free and open access conduces to cheaper software, reduces vendor lock-in, contributes technology transfer to the developing world and enables more effective teaching and learnign of new technology development and use. While ICT companies would claim to agree with these goals, their business models still mostly rely on exclusive licensing, proprietary source code and closed standards, not to mention prohibitive pricing which widens digital divides. In many cases, this leads to a systemic degradation of the ICT industry as a whole, as with the "Cold War" effect of patents. While patents are supposed to foster innovation, in practice big ICT companies end up building huge walls made up of hundreds of patents just as a threat or as a protection against lawsuits from competitors. Since the effect is a systemic Cold War, no single company has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to open up their modes of production. Since the early days, the major players in the ICT industry have sued and counter-sued each other to ridiculous levels. These lawsuits take time (often many years) and require sustaining a team of (very expensive) lawyers and may end up in costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars which could have gone instead into what the patents where supposed to protect: socially meaningful innovation. This is no mere localized or minor issue, just looking at the past few years and only looking at the mobile device sector, the fact is that most of the big companies are suing each other (Apple, Microsoft, Google, HP, Motorola, Oracle). A "few" examples:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/184474/apple_sues_nokia_whos_next.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371822,00.asp
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223101180
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/06/motorola_sues_apple/
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229000550
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-07/nokia-sues-apple-over-technology-used-in-iphone-ipad-update5-.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/htc-sues-apple-over-patent-infringement/34362
http://www.examiner.com/smartphones-in-national/microsoft-sues-google-over-android-os-patent-infringements
http://tech.gaeatimes.com/index.php/archive/google-sues-microsoft-over-hosted-email-battle/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180678/Update_Oracle_sues_Google_over_Java_use_in_Android
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20018305-56.html
http://gizmodo.com/#!5677354/apple-sues-motorola-over-multitouch

Ethically, access to knowledge is a basic human right and copyright seems to be a failed ideology with no empirical or normative support. The trend towards a read-write culture, as opposed to a read-only culture, seems to be an unstoppable aspect of a sustainable information society, but one which is constantly under threat, with costly implications in terms of digital inclusion.