Digital ecosystems are sometimes positioned as a solution to environmental dilemmas without critical reflection of the environmental costs and benefits of the infrastructure and technologies that produce these systems. Discourses of sustainability with respect to digital technologies include assertions of the benefits of paperless offices and frequently do not shift beyond such positions. At the same time, arguments to globalise digital ecosystems for a unified approach to global environmental crises are emerging that are tied to framings of data as a public good but frequently these tend to operationalise digital solutionism. Rhetoric on the need for greater data sharing and transparency of institution-based knowledge is a part of this push. I argue that, despite these optimistic gestures, it is unlikely that data sharing and open digital ecosystems will significantly recast the conditions of the Anthropocene and that such efforts may even further entrench the conditions of this unwanted epoch.

Jessica Mclean

McLean, J., (2020) “Frontier Technologies and Digital Solutions: Digital Ecosystems, Open Data and Wishful Thinking”, Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman 1(1), 4. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/ahip.18