1.1 Welcome to the Anthropocene
How can we involve citizens in designing green smart cities? What can we learn from fungi networks in developing new technologies? How can we design insect-farms for more sustainable food-products? And how can we use AI to measure biodiversity?
Welcome in the Anthropocene, the era where humans have put a tangible mark on our planet. But also, the era where 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 intertangled, 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 are written by experts and leading researchers in an attractive, accessible, and practical writing style. Each chapter offers colourful examples and challenges the reader – without becoming paternalistic – 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 live that makes our own existence possible.
1.2 Chapter overview
In two parts, we discuss crucial relationships in shaping a world based on the morale that technology is green and sustainable. In the first part, we focus on the role of humans. How do humans relate to green tech, and what human processes are needed or should be optimized to help green technology flourish?
first part
Humans, business organizations and governments have been struggling to shape the economy in a sustainable way since the Industrial Revolution. The emergence of new technologies has always influenced these efforts both positively and negatively. In chapter 2, Bart Wernaart reflects on this by discussing groundbreaking books – even including the leading voices in science fiction – that set the agenda on sustainability struggles and challenges since – roughly – 1760.
To make sure green technology is aligned with democratic principles around citizen participation and agency, the democratizing of technology becomes an urgent topic. To this end, in chapter 3, Max Kortlander, Anne-Marie Sweep and Imme Ruarus introduce the Public Stack model as a framework within which to root technological development in the public interest via participatory design practices and open technology.
Since human behaviour is often the bottleneck in the diffusion of green smart technology, Jeske Nederstigt reflects in chapter 4 on the acceptance of green and smart technological innovations, and what we can learn from behavioural sciences to stimulate and normalize sustainable attitudes.
In chapter 5, Leon Kester, Bart Wernaart and Nadisha Marie Aliman reflect on XR and how citizen can participate in its moral programming. XR technology is becoming more complex, is applied in countless contexts (as a professional instrument, a research tool or in the field of leisure), and its use is becoming more widespread amongst citizens. It can be considered as the ‘next big thing’ after Artificial Intelligence (AI). They propose a moral procedure called ‘moral programming’ that should enable technology developers and tech-policy makers to recognize and identify moral issues that need to be answered by those who are to be affected by the new technology, and equip them with a meta-method to establish a bottom-up crowd sourced ethics approach (including feedback loops) in their design process, to align the values of those whom it concerns and those who develop and/or govern.
In Chapter 6 Simona Orzan and Gerard Schouten present inspiring examples of ‘citizen science for nature’ and discuss the impact of these initiatives for society. They argue that humans are curious beings, intelligent and (mostly) social – the precise core ingredients that make a good scientist. They reflect on the challenges for science and the opportunities for citizens.
Technology in general has alienated us from nature. However, technology can also play a role in restoring or even reinventing human-nature connectedness. This duality is discussed by Jetske de Boer and Derk Stobbelaar in chapter 7. In this chapter they present three citizen participation case studies and reflect on the use of technology in the context of their Social-Technical-Ecological System framework.
Food technology in particular is at the core of a new moral revolution. It can alter the way we think about cultural acceptance of certain foods, our perception of what is healthy, and our perception of what it is fair (or sustainable) to consume. Despite the consequences that new technologies bring, the end consumer is rarely involved in the design process. In chapter 8, Bart Wernaart, Sonja Floto-Stammen, Marieke van Vliet and Anika Kok and Natalia Naranjo Guevara propose how to use crowdsourced ethics as input for reshaping our food system by building a food tech moral lab.
Interestingly, ‘technology’ often has a negative connotation when connected to food, as it is considered ‘unnatural ‘. In chapter 9, Niels Louwaars reflects on the world ‘natural’ and rethinks the importance of this word for the design of future food and food technologies.
In the second part, our lens shifts towards green technology. What does green technology look like, and how can it help humans to become more sustainable, obtain a healthier livelihood and take better care of our planet?
second part
AI is revolutionizing industry and transforming society. However, the rapid growth of AI has also raised concerns about the environmental impact of this technology, as the energy consumption required to train and use AI models is increasing exponentially. To address this issue, a new research field called Green AI has emerged. In chapter 10, Qin Zhao and Gerard Schouten explore how to apply green AI in practice by discussing various case studies.
A similar approach can be found in chapter 11, written by Luís Cruz and Petra Heck, with a focus on best practices for sustainable software development.
And to conclude this triptych Danielle Arets and Jessie Harms argue in chapter 12, that engaging with artistic research is essential to raise awareness and inspire the public at large to stay ‘in correspondence’ with green data and AI.
Urban flora is increasingly appreciated for improving the quality of our living environment. Sadly, many do not notice the diversity of their green surroundings and miss out on how urban flora enriches their lives. In chapter 13, Barbara Gravendeel and Yannick Woudstra discuss how AI might cure ‘plant blindness’, validate plant-based ecosystem services, and change perceptions of the added value of urban green spaces with multiple stakeholders.
Chapter 14, written by Georgiana Manolache and Gerard Schouten, shows in detail how this promise can be fulfilled. They present an advanced AI model that can automatically identify and count wildflowers. They demonstrate that a multimodal approach – in which vision is combined with phenology data – significantly improves model performance and is able to solve the typical wildflower puzzle of high intra-class variation and inter-class similarity.
Worldwide, biodiversity is in rapid decline. It is important to help restore the connection of people and nature. One of the ways of doing this is to provide a data platform that supports large-scale monitoring and provides (near) real-time biodiversity services. Therefore, Elaine van Ommen Kloeke, Daniel Kissling, Julian Evans, Chantal Huijbers, Jacob Kamminga and Gerard Schouten introduce in chapter 15 the ARISE infrastructure, that is currently being built and that targets semi-automatically identification of all multicellular species in the Netherlands.
1.3 Building bridges and inclusive authorship
In this book we try to bridge many worlds, and this bridging is done on various levels. First, there is the disciplinary level: the chapters represent a wide range of academic disciplines and professions.
Herein lies the second gap we tried to close: that between the sciences and applied sciences. The moral design of green technology cannot be a merely academic discussion. Instead, it is something actionable. In this book we offer both scientific reflections and applied science perspectives.
Third, we tried to find a proper gender balance in the team of authors. Not only in the authorship of the contributing authors, but also in our references to literature and how we write about individuals. We tried either to use gender-neutral language, or make sure to use he/she references in equal amounts. We also realise that this does not fully cover the diverse gender types that exist and would welcome suggestions to improve that. In this book, the geographic scope of authors is – with some exceptions – predominantly European and North American, with a professional focus on the Netherlands. We are aware that this could be seen as a shortcoming. However, throughout the chapters the reader may recognise a global mind-set.
1.4 On a more personal note
The editors want to express their gratitude to the following people and organizations. First and foremost, we would like to thank the contributing authors who were so kind to share their knowledge and talents with us. We are extremely proud to have been able to work with this author team with such remarkable, creative and bright minds. We would also like to express our gratitude for the cover artwork and the book’s illustrations, created by Berry Sanders with the assistance of the generative AI tool Midjourney.
Second, we would like to thank Fontys University of Applied Sciences for their ongoing support, and their financial contribution to make this publication an open access work. In particular, we would like to thank our colleagues from the Fontys Centre of Expertise AI for Society and Centre of Expertise Sustainable and Circular Transitions for sharing our enthusiasm for this work.
Third we would like to acknowledge our publisher Brill-de Gruyter for placing their trust in us by publishing our work, and for simply being an outstanding publishing company.