Search results

VTT Tiedotteita - Research Notes 2532 ; This report presents a VTT roadmap on ICT for environmental sustainability, based on the assessments and evaluations made by VTT technology experts. We adopt a broad and systemic view to the issue; in other words, we believe that ICT's effectiveness depends on mutual understanding and changing the system level activities, i.e. the complex web of behaviour of people, institutions, organisations and political jurisdictions, like nation-states. We use the term ICT for environmental sustainability or environmentally sustainable ICT, instead of green ICT, and defined it as: The optimal use of ICT for managing the environmental sustainability of societal activities. The roadmap is divided into three themes. Empowering people means using ICT to raise people's awareness of the environmental impact of their actions and to channel their behaviour in a more environmentally-friendly direction. Extending natural resources involves reducing the use of diverse environmentally unsustainable resources through ICT-based solutions. Optimising systems refers to minimising the environmental load of diverse systems by optimising their operation. As a synthesis, we identified four focal topics within the roadmap themes that are most promising for further investigation. These are: 1) environmentally sustainable consumption, 2) smart energy and buildings, 3) lifecycle efficient production, and 4) optimised and adaptive networks.

Developments in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs) may in the near future increasingly lose sight of the human scale. The assessment of emerging technologies and their application in terms of the human condition seems urgently needed, therefore. A useful field for such an assessment is the digitalization of health care.

How should we understand the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and sustainability? Generally, it is assumed that while ICT products contribute to many environmental and social problems as they are produced and disposed of, the potential of using ICT to achieve a more sustainable society is immense. However, despite the fact that such a discourse is favored not only in the industrial but also in the political and academic spheres, we have yet to see this presumed sustainability-related potential of ICT fully exploited. This thesis argues that conventional assumptions and understandings related to three abstractions in sustainable ICT research and practice – namely the technological, the social, and the sustainable – contribute to an overly optimistic discourse of sustainable ICT, which favors certain research approaches and practical applications. Adhering to such a discourse risks reinforcing, rather than breaking loose from, an unsustainable status quo. Through problematization, this thesis aims to unveil and challenge such underlying assumptions and understandings, based on insights from the social sciences and philosophy. New assumptions and understandings of sustainable ICT research and practice are suggested, and contribute with a perspective that among other things emphasize the ontological inseparability of the technological and the social, implying an anti-essentialist position embracing the value-ladenness and value and meaning mediatory aspects of such phenomena. The normative contributions include theoretical and methodological approaches to sustainable ICT design and sustainable ICT entrepreneurship – identified as two central practices for sustainable ICT to promote sustainability – that aim to mobilize politically charged discourses of our being together with each other, technologies and nature in order to facilitate collaborative action towards sustainable futures. This thesis should be seen as a critical contribution to fields interested in sustainable ICT, such as ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) and Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI).

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is fundamental to the delivery and support of all aspects of society in addition to significantly contributing directly to each nation's GDP. This briefing captures key actions and requirements for the domain in the light of the UK's decision to exit the EU. It is based on the views of ICT and other professionals from the UK and internationally. It makes the case that the UK Government needs to work overtly with a wide range of ICT experts to ensure that laws are optimized for the ICT domain and that there are targeted policies and funding strategies to support and grow the ICT domain through this change. In addition, it raises the significance of international cooperation in particular to meet environmental and ICT ethical challenges.

The study examines the importance of ICT culture in schools for the integrative use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching. Schools with above-average computer infrastructure (high-tech schools) were examined to see whether differences in the frequency and versatility of ICT use in class could be observed due to the different ICT cultures.
20 schools with the best technical equipment (10 primary schools and 10 lower secondary schools) were included in the study by means of guided interviews and questionnaire surveys. The questionnaire surveys covered 20 ICT managers, 270 teachers and 679 pupils.