Monday 13 May at 8.45 pm, at the Cinema Filo of Cremona, Stefana BroadbentAssociate Professor at the Polytechnic of Milan in the Department of Design, will present the book “Digital Ecology: For a technology at the service of people, society and the environment”.
This book explains how the digital revolution impacts the climate, environment, workers and society.
The digital world is less green than it seems and this book clearly explains that the cloud is not in the clouds but in data centers that consume energy and produce CO2 every time we send an email.
Furthermore, This book allows you to learn about and practice a “critical consumption” of technologyto design a low-impact web and prevent e-waste: for a clean, open and regenerative digital world.
Digital Ecology is the perfect book for those who really want to understand what they are doing when they send an email, watch a video or use social media.
The book’s foreword is by Gerry McGovernconsidered among the “five visionaries with a fundamental impact on web development”.
“I thought that digital – he writes – was always the best choice for the environment. I was convinced it was definitely better to send an email than a letter. A paper letter emits approximately 29 grams of CO2. An email produces about 4 grams. Given the opportunity, we should then send emails. [Ma] every day we send around 400 billion emails of which the vast majority are spam. And this is the problem that lies at the heart of digital: it is the greatest engine of extreme consumption and over-production ever invented. […] The problem is that humans can’t handle it […] that speed. With digital, we find ourselves trapped in a world of short-term thinkers continuously selling superficial desires. We don’t need to move that fast. It’s not good for us. It’s definitely not good for life on Earth.”
The meeting is part of the “Walking on a Silk Thread” exhibition that the Cremona Campus of the Polytechnic of Milan has decided to dedicate to environmental and economic sustainability, the climate crisis and critical consumption.
The initiative was organized in collaboration with the Municipality of Cremona, Città Rurale with the Cremona Urban Bees project, Filiera Corta Solidale, Nonsolonoi Altromercato, Slow Food Cremonese, Circolo Vedo Verde Legambiente Cremona and Cai Cremona.
Walking on a silk thread means being in a precarious balance, as we all are today, who find ourselves facing a climate crisis that has persisted for decades and which is taking on increasingly darker contours, with disasters caused by sudden storms, water bombs and increasingly frequent drought phenomena.
Can we get out of this? It doesn’t seem possible, but we will have to find a way to adapt to climate change, since we are experiencing in an often tragic way that the climate does not adapt to our habits.
This review seeks to investigate the multiple facets of what undermines this fragile balance, which affects all human activities, like an unstoppable cascade, interfering with the environment in which we are used to living and which we consider immutable.
The objective is to raise awareness among citizens on crucial issues such as pollution, migration, the presence of wild animals in peri-urban areas, land consumption, the use of IT tools, food production and all the human activities that produce inequalities and pollution and which are both the cause and consequence of climate change.
The review offers food for thought and suggests concrete actions that every individual can take in daily life to help mitigate inequalities and pollution: this series of heterogeneous events can well be defined as a project for ecological culture, a training model continues informal open to all and represents a precious opportunity for the City of Cremona to grow in awareness and responsibility towards the environmental and social challenges of our time.
Walking on a Silk Thread, now in its second edition, has already enjoyed good success with the public and critics and each event confirms the growing interest in the highly topical issues that the event aims to address.
The events are held within the ‘Trama dei Diritti’, the cultural space promoted by Csv Lombardia Sud open to all organizations involved in building the culture of rights.
Below is the calendar of other scheduled events:
- September 30th Meeting with the author – Crocodiles at the North Pole and ice at the Equator with Antonello Provenzale
- October 14th Meeting with the author – We are weeds with Mauro Ferrari
- October 28th Meeting with the author – On the side of nature with Francesco Sottile
- November 18th Dissemination Seminar – (Extra)Terrestrial Climates: what the climates of other worlds teach us about the Earth’s climate with Michele Maris
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