Welcome to the Anthropocene, the era in which humans have put a tangible mark on our planet. But also the era in which humans and technology have the potential to shape the necessary transitions towards a sustainable world. Technology and nature are often considered as two opposing phenomena. However, they are increasingly intertwined, for better or worse. In this book, we explore how technology and nature relate to one another in the moral design of new, green technology.
This book is relevant for IT and engineering professionals, business leaders and policy makers with (green) innovation in their portfolios and students of (applied) science who are interested in either sustainable and green design of technology or in the application of technology – with an emphasis on AI and IT – to create a greener, more sustainable world. The chapters have been written by experts and leading researchers in an attractive, accessible, and practical writing style. Each chapter offers colourful examples and challenges the reader to critically think through moral decision-making and the design of innovations considering our planet’s perspective. This is a conceptual change in values. Nature should not be considered as a resource: it is the fabric of life that makes our own existence possible.
Bart Wernaart is Professor of Moral Design Strategy and Chair of the Centre of Expertise Sustainable and Circular Transitions at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. He earned his Ph.D. in the field of international human rights law and has extensive experience in teaching legal subjects in business schools. He is the head of Research at Fontys Business and Communication.
Gerard Schouten is Professor of AI & data at Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Chair of the Centre of Expertise AI for Society. He earned his Ph.D. in the field of cognition and perception, and has extensive experience in applied research and teaching data- and AI-related topics.
List of figures and tables About the authors (in alphabetical order)
1 Moral design and green technology Bart Wernaart and Gerard Schouten
2 Sustainability struggle: economics, business, and technology
A brief history and future challenges
Bart Wernaart
3 Democratizing green technology with the public stack Max Kortlander, Anne-Marie Sweep and Imme Ruarus
4 Behavioural insights for moral design and green technology Jeske Nederstigt
5 The moral programming of XR, and what we can learn from the AI experience Leon Kestert, Nadisha-Marie Aliman and Bart Wernaart
6 Citizen science for nature Simona Orzan and Gerard Schouten
7 The role of technology in human-nature-connectedness
Case studies on citizen participation
Derk Jan Stobbelaar and Jetske G. de Boer
8 Food ethics and technology
Towards food innovation with crowdsourced ethics
Bart Wernaart, Sonja Floto-Stammen, Marieke van Vliet, Anika Kok and Natalia Naranjo Guevara
9 How natural is our food?
How relevant is that word for the design of future food?
Niels Louwaars
10 How to apply green AI in practice?
Moving from FLOPs to CO₂ footprint
Qin Zhao and Gerard Schouten
11 Lessons learned from developing green software Luís Cruz and Petra Heck
12 A daily data workout!
Being in correspondence for a green data revolution
Danielle Arets and Jessie Harms
13 Added value of AI for studying urban plants Barbara Gravendeel and Yannick Woudstra
14 Adding contextual information to object detection models: a wildflower monitoring case Georgiana Manolache and Gerard Schouten
15 ARISE: a Dutch dataspace connecting nature and people Elaine van Ommen Kloeke, W. Daniel Kissling, Julian Evans, Chantal Huijbers, Jacob Kamminga and Gerard Schouten