How digital will the future be? Analysis of prospective scenarios

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how digital technologies are envisioned in climate change scenarios, revealing a consistent presence but limited critical reflection and a lack of systemic perspective in current prospective studies.

Contribution

It introduces a typology for analyzing digital technology representation in climate-related future scenarios and highlights gaps in systemic understanding of ICT in these studies.

Findings

All scenarios include digital technology in the future.

Few scenarios question our relationship with digital tech.

No scenarios envision breakthroughs in current technologies.

Abstract

With the climate change context, many prospective studies, generally encompassing all areas of society, imagine possible futures to expand the range of options. The role of digital technologies within these possible futures is rarely specifically targeted. Which digital technologies and methodologies do these studies envision in a world that has mitigated and adapted to climate change? In this paper, we propose a typology for scenarios to survey digital technologies and their applications in 14 prospective studies and their corresponding 35 future scenarios. Our finding is that all the scenarios consider digital technology to be present in the future. We observe that only a few of them question our relationship with digital technology and all aspects related to its materiality, and none of the general studies envision breakthroughs concerning technologies used today. Our result demonstrates the lack of a systemic view of information and communication technologies. We therefore argue for new prospective studies to envision the future of ICT.