DIGITAL COLLABORATION AND COEXISTENCE
We live in a world where we have undergone a digital transformation in most areas of society and economies. Our social and business interactions have become data intensive, algorithms augment humans in most areas and our cities, homes and devices have developed previously incomprehensible levels of autonomy.
The world, however, is challenged. Climate is changing, peace is threatened, economies are shifting. As a result, differences are growing and entirely new challenges for the design, implementation and evaluation of information systems are emerging.
This requires a stronger focus, academically and in practice, on global governance frameworks, strategies and policies that are responsible, sustainable and value-generating. But how do we learn to collaborate and coexist in a hyper-connected, opportunity-rich micro-world embedded in a globally challenged macro-world?
Coexistence acknowledges the presence of different worlds and requires us to consider where these worlds complement each other, how to address paradoxical tensions between them and where they require individual, separate solutions. Humans and artificial products do coexist, so do data-rich and data-poor environments. The same is the case for different levels of affordability, literacy and accessibility to digital goods and opportunities.
A very important coexistence is between humankind and the globe. We need to make sure that our children and their children still have a planet worth living on. Thus, to coexist with the globe we need to focus on green and sustainable IT. In fact, digital can make a great contribution to the optimisation of energy provision and consumption, e.g. by innovating low-emission products, building green data centers and offering scalable, intuitive carbon-tracking solutions.
Approaching the opportunities and challenges of coexistence with evidence-based research means dealing with complex, often wicked problems that single disciplines, and science overall, cannot sufficiently address on their own. Thus, we need to collaborate differently – faster, larger and more effectively and efficiently. Cross-disciplinarity and working across coexisting environments is difficult and current research approaches require further advancement to cater for the scale and urgency of today’s questions with climate challenges being among of the most pressing ones.