This “Chips Act” includes three aspects: a clear European research strategy, the develop-ment of production capacities, and interna-tional partnerships and cooperation.

have opened branch of-fices around Austin in Texas to solidify their foothold in the American market.

wafer manufacturing and coating,

“foundries.”

Chip Manufacturing Process

The chip industry is marked by a high de-gree of fragmentation and specialization

over Taiwan, which is a key location for the global supply of chips.

has exposed structural weaknesses in crisis-prone production pro-cesses and supply chain security deficien-cies.

due to complex production pro-cesses

three simultane-ous developments: the COVID-19 pan-demic, geopolitical tensions, and climate change.

the right type of data and putting in the right questions

what we can learn from the dat

no standardization, no harmonization, no agreement about data validation, what models to use, how to share models, how to improve them over time there is going to be very little valid research, but enormous amounts of media hype

there are massive variations in data, methods, and results.

who is funding the research

trace data back to its sources,

question the system boundaries,

to evaluate environmental crisis

to make ICTs sustainable themselve

like energy consumption and climate impact, the resiliency of infrastructure, rising sea levels, the extensiveness or the extensive and complex supply chains that exist, the resource use, water, land, et cetera, and then obviously the impact on biodiversity and communities are just some of the ways that the environment and digital intersect

increasing the cooperation

access to environmental data needs to be ensured

on the fostering of global standardization and the harmonization of environmental data

enable greater citizen participation

to foster evidence-based decision making

in building these capacities in developing countries

investing in digital literacy

increase inclusivity for individuals and communities

better equipment for informal workers, investing, building capacity, and assisting in drafting and adopting relevant legislation.

calls for dedicated support for developing countries to tackle e-waste challenges and upgrade repair and recycling activities

international standards for implementing circularity across the ICT supply chain

call for international standards for ‘acceptable levels of transparency, traceability, interoperability in all supply chains’

maximising the environmental efficiency of digital technologies

o raise awareness and implement risk management policies regarding cybersecurity

the development or adoption of tools and processes that reduce inefficiencies

national and regional plans and strategies to use digital tools for the optimisation of inefficient water systems

calls for increasing capacities for the use of space-derived earth science data for ensuring local food and water security

hat digitalisation in food systems should always be applied with contextual sensitivity,

to maximise the impact of that environmental information through digitalisation.

to ensuring environmental data access from collection to sensemaking.

a need for standardising and harmonising existing data sets and ensuring the data is accessible

policy recommendations

Policy Network on Environment and Digitalisation

the IGF has a critical role to play both as a convener and as a helper in setting the compass

the fundamental threats to democracy

accelerators of existing inequality and discrimination, and have brought data to the forefront.

transparency around certain issues such as inequity, social and economic injustice, and corresponding digital policies.

urged for more neutral research of these issues, so they are not shadowed by profit-based and government research.

human-centred and responsible technology

the UN guiding principles

the digital inequalities which were brought to the fore due to the COVID-19

needs to exist, and second, what the internet needs to thrive.

an open internet is not only about technical components; regulation is needed, and not in the hands of protocol designers.

to support it through smart regulation.

interoperability remains an issue, which is also closely connected to competition.

a technologically neutral, general-purpose network

common global identifiers

a decentralised management and a distributed routing system

n open architecture of interoperable and reusable building blocks

an accessible infrastructure with a common protocol

five critical properties of an open internet way of networking

ISOC developed an Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit.

he human inclination to line-drawing is conceptually very reassuring, but humanity is not only drawn to concepts.

(AI could not suffer, could not be intersubjective, needed to be regulated),

the dystopian claim of the human as a new creator

laim that vulnerability essentially is what most qualifies myself as being bound to and among others;

Like Koch, he insisted that humans would not and should not be subsumed under a concept of agency in the future that could include AI and humanity as equal partners.

Moreover, each of us, like the philosopher Matthias Lutz-Bachmann,

Nussbaum (1999) emphasizes the key capabilities to live a life (1) in one’s own environment and in one’s own context, (2) worth living in its full length and with good health and nutri-tion, (3) with adequate satisfaction of needs as well as use of the five senses (if fully available), and (4) avoiding unneces-sary pain, but also (5) in connection with nature as a whole while treating it caringly.

on the capabilities approach (CA), which goes back to Amartya Sen (1985) and Martha Nussbaum (1999;

it “involves a new connection between ethical values and the well-being of the community in a more comprehensive sense that also includes our territorial and ecological interrelations”

without falling back on the mental barri-ers of the historically formative dualisms of body and mind, nature and culture, nature and technology.

stands for a new humanism beyond anthropocentrism that does more justice to the diversity of humans in their environmen

whether the essence of a human being can actually be expressed in terms of information (Damberger, 2016:32ff.

since transhumanism – unlike humanism – “degrades humans to a passive object of design”

“largely ignore the fact that an (individual) human being [...] cannot be completely controlled, calculated and predicted as ‘humankind’”

with regard to a “philosophical naïvety” and contradictory arguments (Loh, 2018:15).

transfer of consciousness to computer systems (mind upload-ing) to overcome human corporeality and to achieve the eter-nal existence of the individual mind

to overcome existing boundaries of body and mind (Kehl and Coenen, 2016)

as AI, nanotechnology, biotechnology and neurotechnology will ex-pand the human being’s natural abilities to reach a new stage of evolution.

Among the supporters of this movement, econom-ic liberals and libertarian representatives of Silicon Valley (e.g. Kurzweil, Thiel) in particular have attracted a lot of attention (Kehl and Coenen, 2016).

in humanism and looking at humans as part of a continuum of nature, culture and technology.

by creating a techno logy-based species.

he aim of transhumanism is to use the possibilities of scientific and technological progress to expand human capabilities, thereby initiating a new stage of human evolution.

rethink the traditional conception of what it means to be hu-man

Planetary guardrails for global environmental change

n terms of the Enlightenment, we must ask “whether we have the technology we need” and “whether we need the technology we have” (Kornwachs, 2009:39). In other words, technology must be there for the sake of humans, not humans for the sake of technology

he individuals are not perceived in their entirety but as mere objects.

an “enlightenment about digital enlightenment”

Hans Jonas’ principle of responsibility, accord-ing to which the effects of human actions must be compatible with securing genuine human life on Earth and all (technical or political) actors have a responsibility to maintain the con-ditions for a dignified existence (Jonas, 1979),

They must be protected from exclusionary use for profit max-imization and from abuse. To this purpose, fundamental or-ganizational, regulatory and financial decisions, e.g. obliga-tions to provide information, are necessary to develop a public-welfare orientation using digital common goods

They are being used in more and more core areas of society (e.g. health care, law enforcement) as a basis for deci-sion-making, often without the knowledge of those affected.

Digital technologies are changing how we communicate, how we perceive societal debates, and how we can take part in them.

or monitoring compliance with man-agement rules and bans that are aimed at preventing the overexploitation of biological resources.

How can digital technologies, digitalized infrastructures, as well as digitalized systems and end devices be made sustainable, especially with regard to their energy and resource consumption and the establishment of a circular economy

by contradictory assessments and a lot of uncertainty.

not enough reliable knowledge about the impact of digital technologies on the Earth system, societies and people.

IEEE initiative on ‘ Ethically Aligned Design‘

companies should, on the one hand, develop guidelines that con-sistently integrate ethics and sustainability aspects into their internal research. On the other hand, they should offer appropriate training and further-educa-tion programmes to empower developers to critically engage with conscious (e.g. privacy by design) and unconscious (e.g. gender stereotypes) assignments of values in technologies.

Digitalization for sustainability, in the sense of developing digitally supported solutions oriented towards the SDGs, should become an additional concrete mission of the High-Tech Strategy

Social, ecological and cultural dimensions of innovations should be reinforced as strategic elements for achie-ving welfare.

the planned European Institute of Innovation and Tech-nology as a cooperative knowledge and innovation community together with industry.

recommends structurally incorporating research on fundamental global challenges (‘grand challenges’) into the future framework programme

in stimulating relevant discourses and provid-ing technically sound foundations

‘Transformation research

Dis-course arenas’ should be set up to discuss digital- ethical topics in the context of a broad understand-ing of sustainability. These should include science, politics, business and potential users.

the ‘man – machine – environment’ relationship.

related to human-machine interaction.

A labelling obligation should be estab-lished for communication with a machine ‘counter-part’

The relationship between humans, machines and the environment is dynamic because all three components can be changed by humans via technology.

‘Our Common Digital Future’. In preparation for the UN Summit, a ‘World Commission on Sustainability in the Digital Age’ should be appointed, modelled on the ‘Brundtland Commission’

knowledge and digital commons as a public service

to the common good:

by the strict imple-mentation of data security and data protection by design and by default.

a United Nations Privacy Convention

Anticipation and ‘futures literacy’ should be specifically promoted as new research and education subjects and consoli-dated in existing bodies; or else suitable future bod-ies should be created for the purpose

DG 4, ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’

online media education, digital intelligence and an understanding of technol-ogy

educa-tional content and formats must be in line with the key challenges facing society and promote digital literacy.

an (unconditional) basic income or more direct par-ticipation in company profits should be comprehen-sively scrutinized to determine their individual and societal incentive value

Examples include coordinating humanitarian aid after an epidemic outbreak, supervising compliance with fishing quo-tas, and monitoring systems for measuring advances in development.

to encourage transparent value chains (e.g. certificates and product labels).

Digitally supported monitor-ing helps protect ecosystems.

Electronic waste should be effectively recycled and illegal exports prevented.

should include longevity and ease of repair,

riented towards the common good

Human dignity is the focal, unchangeable point of reference in this context.

The EU has a special role to play here: on the one hand in developing its own sustainable, dig-itally supported model for the future that differs from the existing models in China and the USA; on the other as a player on the international stage working towards a shared understanding in a multilateral network.

for a sustainable, digitally supported future.

narratives extrapolate

selected elements from scientific and popular-science sources to form utopian and dystopian narratives.

‘deep drillings‘

Some of the arenas are at the direct interface between the environment and digitalization, dealing, for example, with energy and resource con-sumption and land use

analyses the historical development towards the Digital Age, its basic functions, key technologies and essential characteristics, as well as foreseeable changes to key areas of human civilization, i.e. to the environment, to human beings, society, the economy and technology

the further development of our civilization on a finite planet in the digital Anthropocene

Immanuel Kant analysed the essence of the Enlighten-ment as a ‘change in the way people think’.

across the entire value chain should be globally established.

should be made availa-ble on a non-discriminatory basis as part of basic public services,

the sustainability and environmental data collected for SDG indicators and Earth obser-vation should be made available as digital commons

The resulting inter-national digital commons should be used as a starting point for the establishment and realiza-tion of services and applications for global (envi-ronmental) awareness.

accomplished of bringing together climate and Earth-system research with social science and economic disciplines to form the sustainability sciences that are established today, it is now necessary to quickly and closely interlink these with digitalization research.

the sense of future-oriented and creative, inclusive societies.

strengthening global (environmental) awareness and the cultures and systems of global cooperation by using digital opportunities, and also strengthening an advancement of AI that furthers human development opportunities, societal lear-ning and social cohesion.

the protection of the planet and the pre-servation of human integrity and dignity.

Charter for the transition to a digitalized sustain-ability society:

achievements of humanism and enlightenment over the past two centuries

New humanism for the Digital Age – renew the nor-mative foundations of our societies:

fundamental decisions to be taken on five different stages for a European road to digitalized sustainability societies, in order to master the profound and radical changes towards sustainability in the Digital Age.

Ideas on how ethical principles for AI could be developed, or how digital change should be used to implement the SDGs, are still in their early stages.

help combine competitiveness with data protection in order, hopefully, to create competitive advantages for EU companies, e.g. in competition with China and the USA

he EU is working on a European data space aimed at providing citizens and businesses with a highly developed, well-functioning, transparent system of public data, information, services and standards.

identifies sys-temic risks in the Digital Age, which include the follow-ing:

(e.g. breaching of plane-tary guard rails, digital authoritarianism, further power gains by large digital corporations

Karl Polanyi, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber also teach us that standards and values can ultimately only be anchored in societies

Adam Smith, who was not only an economist but also a moral philosopher – a fact that is often for-gotten – argued in his ‘Wealth of Nations’ (1776) that markets and radical change could only function without destabilizing societies if the autonomy of market dynamics were constrained by the norms and values of societies.

in the digital Anthropocene, humans create tools with which they can now fundamentally transform themselves through ever closer human-machine cooperation using digital-ized technology and an ever closer interaction with AI, right up to the technological dystopias of ‘human enhancement’, a technologically supported optimiza-tion of the human being.

Autonomous technical systems that make independent decisions based on data are already being used in industry to control production processes,

our view of what it means to be human, the economy, labour markets, learning processes, our knowledge, our dealings with technology, society and nature.

Networking can increase the vulnerability of interdependent infra-structures and processes

which were hardly taken into consideration by the architects of the 2030 Agenda

Fake news, social credit scores, the erosion of civilization standards on the internet, the loss of confidence in data-driven services, govern-ments’ problems in properly taxing companies operat-ing in the digital sphere, politicians who seem over-taxed by the demands of accelerated digitalization – all these are just some of the pathological effects of unchecked developments.

echnical inno-vation surges do not automatically translate into sus-tainability transformations, but must be closely cou-pled with sustainability guidelines and policies.

no technological determination per se for the major chal-lenges facing humankind.

a digitally driven sustainabil-ity transformation

Decarbonization, a cir-cular economy, more environmentally friendly agricul-ture, resource efficiency and emissions reductions, and the monitoring and protection of ecosystems

combine digitali-zation, planetary guard rails and social cohesion

linked with the great sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene.

the opportunities and risks of algorithm-based decision-making processes, or the interlinkage between our physical world and virtual spaces.

a massive impact on all 17 SDGs of the 2030 Agenda.

International agreements that call for transformations towards sustainability now exist due to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda with its 17 SDGs (2015), the Paris Climate Agreement (2015) and the Aichi targets for biodiversity (2010)

he planetary guard rails and can offer all people, including future generations, a good life in dignity and a long-term future

the Great Transfor-mation towards Sustainability

The protec-tion of human dignity is the ultimate challenge in this context.

mastering the present-day ecological and social challenges

no irreversible decisions

the areas of research and development and in multilateral polic

the future of humankind in the post-industrial age in a democratic way that is ori-ented towards the common good.

the current challen-ges of digitalization be contained by regulation

an opti-mistic point of view,

since the Neolithic Age has evidently been self-organized and directed toward substituting and transcending human (physio-logical, manual and cognitive) capabilities, can the cre-ation of a new entity by humans not be seen as the next, perhaps inevitable leap in planetary evolution?

a general moratorium that would fundamentally prohibit R&D efforts to create conscious and therefore sentient systems.

on what ontological quality

whether animate artificial entities with independent deci-sion-making and reproductive capabilities could be formed in a later phase of the digital revolution

in the East Asian cultural sphere than in Western societies, for example, and promotes a world view that does not categorically isolate humans from nature and technology.

he more diverse and intimate will be the points of contact, interfaces and hinges between tech-nology and people.

this would delin-eate a ‘soft’ vision of societal progress.

to capacities that are not directly cognitive; these are often referred to collec-tively as emotional and social intelligence

n some areas AI far surpasses the cognitive performance of our species.