The design of digitization determines the working world of the future, touches the question of how free we live and shapes the progress of medicine. Digitalisation is also a decisive factor in solving the ecological crisis - the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU) now comes to this conclusion in a new report, which will be handed over on Thursday in Berlin.
The advisory body of the federal government calls itself dealing with the complex issue itself "the biggest challenge the WBGU has faced since its founding in 1992". Dirk Messner, chairman of the WGBU, explains in an interview why digitization is intensifying social inequality and urgently needs to be trimmed to sustainability. The fusion of man and machine causes him great concern.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Messner, digitization is often praised as smart and clean. In your new report for the Federal Government you call it a "fire accelerator" for many problems of ecology and social security. Why?
Dirk Messner: Digitization is not automatically a process that leads us to more sustainability or social cohesion. If we do not focus on sustainability then we will only accelerate the problems that we have anyway. Because we are continuing to extend the idea of continuous, resource and greenhouse gas-based growth using digital technologies, even though this is causing huge environmental problems. This also applies to the social sphere, because digitization increases power concentrations and inequalities.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Can digitization then even help with the "great transformation to sustainability", which the WBGU demands in view of the climate crisis, species loss and loss of ecosystems?
Messner: Basically yes. For a green and fair economy, we need the farewell of fossil fuels, a circular economy, more efficiency, less material consumption and protection of ecosystems. All these goals can be better achieved with digital technology than without them.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: To what extent?
Messner: This can be seen in the task of combining supply and demand from the electricity market: Utilization, distribution and distribution of renewable energies are much easier to coordinate with digital technology. And we hope that we get with self-driving cars up to 90 percent of the previous vehicles from the road. That would be an enormous relief. Digitization offers the technology for that, but first of all we have to decide to use it for it as well, for which we need the right political conditions and decisions.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: As it looks, but these are currently less affected in politics than in the headquarters of Facebook and Google.
Messner: That's true, but it's also good news. Talking about climate protection and resource conservation with digital companies is easier than talking to steel companies. Digital companies are staging themselves as successors to the "old economy", so they can be allies. Although the big players are of course still a long way from being called "sustainable," many, like Apple, are increasingly picking up on the topic.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But they also demand that the policy should set rules.
Messner: Making digitization sustainable is a major change that needs design, also because of international competition. There is China's approach, which is authoritarian-digital, and the US approach, which leaves much to the market. It is an opportunity for Europe for a social model of the future: bringing together digitalisation with social cohesion, participation and sustainability.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does politics take this opportunity to design?
Messner: At least not at the global level when it comes to the connection to the sustainability goals. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as education, poverty reduction and environmental protection, were adopted by the UN community in 2015 - and digitalisation is not mentioned in any way! One has to imagine that: The megatrend, which triggers comprehensive global change, is simply ignored. We scientists are not innocent because sustainability and digitization research is hardly networked, which has to change quickly. Luckily, there is now a working group at the highest UN level on the subject and we also call for a UN Framework Convention on Digitization.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the past, technical progress has always meant that we consume even more resources. Why should the digital revolution be different?
Messner: Most of the technological, social or political-economic upheavals have only led to setbacks. When the book printing was introduced, it was a blessing for education and enlightenment - but first, at the beginning of the Thirty Years War, the hatred between the population groups was much faster spread as before. We have to prevent such dynamics and increase the potential of digitization without making the setbacks too big.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Elsewhere, however, you also call for restraint. For example, in the fusion of man and machine that threatens the horizon.
Messner: The threat is not on the horizon, it is already being worked on. By linking DNA analysis, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, we transform humans into programs themselves. In the past few decades, we have irrevocably changed the planet, so we live in the Anthropocene, the age in which man first became the strongest force in the Earth system. Now we are talking about the digital Anthropocene. Utopia and horror imagination are close together. That is why we focus on the dignity of the human being.
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Dying occupations: Jobs without a futureSPIEGEL ONLINE: Is not the WBGU taking over? Previously, you were responsible for environmental issues, now you're about to draft a vision for the future of humanity.
Messner: We had a very intensive debate about this on the advisory board. But digitization touches on all the elements we need to transform industrial society towards sustainability: technology, participation, social issues, sustainable development. If we can not say anything about it, we can not fulfill our task. However, engineers or economists on their own generally do not come with an overall view - but we all need them: the engineers for the technical solutions, the economists for the incentive systems, the philosophers for the ethics, the social scientists for the organization of the institutions of our society ,
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You also say that not only technology, but also more social skills, empathy and solidarity are needed for the transformation. Do we have to become more human in order to master digitization?
Messner: The challenges of digitization can not be solved with the tools of digitization. We need to make our societies more resilient, communicate more, and be guided by the Earth system's guard rails.