Information Retrieval Systems Worksheet

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Question at position 5 Index the following journal article using a free text vocabulary (no thesaurus):Digital sustainability: Ethics, epistemology, complexity and modellingLinks to an external site.. By Lino Trinchini, Rodolfo BaggioFirst Monday, Volume 28, Number 9 – 4 September 2023https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/12934/11330Links to an external site. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v28i9.12934Links to an external site.1. IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the adoption of extraordinary measures by countries around the world. To control and prevent viral infections, national lockdowns and “circuit breaker” measures were introduced for months or weeks, with restriction of movements and travel within and across countries depending on assessed levels of risk. These interventions aimed at reducing outdoor/indoor interactions and gatherings at schools, universities, offices, public places (stadiums, parks, playgrounds and markets), shops and sports venues. As an essential component of the production and consumption of global goods and services, human mobility and the transportation industries were the most affected (Bonaccorsi, et al., 2020). With massive drops in the demand and supply of leisure-based services and in-store shopping, and impact on labour forces (del Rio-Chanona, et al., 2020), the travel and tourism (Sigala, 2020), hospitality and restaurants (Dube, et al., 2020), non-food retailing and events (Madray, 2020; Sheth, 2020) were affected more by partial or full business shutdowns than industries less dependent on experiential activities and capable to survive through online marketplaces.In the continuous (re)allocation of essential and non-essential activities, the development and use of technologies defined life and work during the pandemic. The screening, tracing and forecasting of infections, deaths and recovery was possible through mobile applications, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) (Bullock, et al., 2020; Kamalov, et al., 2022). In turn, a divide emerged and expanded in relation to differing capabilities of accessing smart ICTs, fast Internet services or shifting businesses to e-commerce (Beaunoyer, et al., 2020). At the social level, for example, the widespread use of videoconferencing reduced isolation during hospitalisation, quarantine and lockdowns and enabled remote participation to live events (workshops, conferences, concerts). Platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams also enabled teaching and learning. The overall effects on in-person educational experiences and social interactions still requires further and in-depth investigations from both institutional and student perspectives. Similarly, the opportunity to work at home was not equally available to all forms of employment, with notable limitations and sociopsychological issues (e.g., isolation and anxiety) emerging from so-called smart (or better remote) working (Barbieri, et al., 2021).The critical role played by ICTs during the pandemic can only be understood from different and multiple perspectives, including the socio-technological dimension. Unlike other viral diseases (AIDS, SARS, Ebola and MERS), the COVID-19 pandemic was characterised by an unparallel high degree of global connectedness and social complexity (Zhu, et al., 2021). It was a kind of massive “experiment” concerning a sudden adjustment to online living and working, without any warning, planning or training. This experiment occurred without comparable precedents in the history of technology. Although many of the calls for profound modifications in attitudes and behaviours might seem exaggerated (Warwick, 2021), one area was deeply affected, that of online shopping (Kim, 2020). The relatively long duration of forced digital adaptation definitely and permanently formed or reinforced a familiarity with online shopping and changed attitudes and intentions (Lally, et al., 2010). The view of society as a combination of complex, dynamic and networked systems is not new (Craven and Wellman, 1973; Luhmann, 1982), and evolved alongside advancements in ICTs (Martin, 1978; Castells, 1996; Sheller and Urry, 2006). With smart ICT diffusion, and an overly attention to big/open data benefits and challenges, terms like digital transformation [1Links to an external site.], digital sustainability [2Links to an external site.] and smart society [3Links to an external site.] emerged as popular concepts in literature and in popular media (Chakravorti and Chaturvedi, 2017; Bockshecker, et al., 2018). This emphasis on ICTs could be deemed as an ongoing phenomenon pre-existing before COVID-19. The pandemic acted as a catalyst for the adoption of ICTs, accelerating their enrichment and integration along with concerns for future socio-economic and environmental sustainability.This paper will first explore the implications of digital sustainability across three pillars of sustainable development, then address ethical and epistemological issues involved along with instrumentarianism power, the role of complexity science and finally discuss the challenges imposed by simulation and modelling as essential instruments for understanding the phenomenon. Alongside positive implications, the concept of digital sustainability should also consider potential negative effects of digital technologies on the environment, economies and societies. It must be considered, in fact, that ICTs, besides having a role in solving sustainability issues, are also part of the problem (Chowdhury, 2013).2. The pillars of sustainabilityThe concept of sustainable development stemmed from environmental policies and a different approach to economic growth addressing global inequalities. As a solution to the idea of progress and its adverse socio-environmental effects, the term has become popular since the Brundtland report, “Our common future” (World Commission on Environment and Development [WCED], 1987). The mainstream view of sustainable development was institutionalised around radical criticism of economic growth neglecting social and environmental issues. Over time, sustainability discourses have been assimilated by achievements of evolving sets of goals embedded in a three-pillars approach to sustainable development. Despite the continuous redefinition of Sustainable Development Goals and a recent extension to the ‘common view’ and the ‘2030 agenda’ (United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015; Shi, et al., 2019), the tripartite approach to sustainability has gained traction and acceptance without a solid theoretical foundation (Purvis, et al., 2019). The conceptual forces driving the different narratives and frameworks in sustainability literature can be broadly associated with holistic, individual and yet interrelated approaches to the three-pillar model (Josephsen, 2017; Purvis, et al., 2019). As such, the social, economic and environmental dimensions have been discussed in relation to a digital and pervasive technological context in order to identify some of the most relevant implications for sustainability.Socio-culturalDigital technologies are meaningful and proactive agents of socio-cultural transformations. Their view as means to an end, or better, mere tools to achieve sustainability, does not help in fully understanding the profound influence of instrumentarian technologies. This is evident in several conceptual and empirical studies addressing the role of ICT in society. Theories conceptualised the information society (Webster, 2014) or the network society (Castells, 1996; van Dijk, 2020) or smart society (Iannone, et al., 2019), often defined according to a progressive numbering of software versions (Deguchi, et al., 2020; Narvaez Rojas, et al., 2021). As “novel” interpretations of socio-political and cultural changes, they arose from prior theories and conceptualisations of society (Craven and Wellman, 1973; Crawford, 1983) and still needed solid theoretical underpinnings (e.g., smart society). Social networks existed before the Internet, as argued by Castells (1996), and before the phrase was coined (Barnes, 1954). The importance of information and knowledge in society was also deemed ahead of the Advent of Information Age and Knowledge Society (Drucker, 1969; Crawford, 1983). Wireless and Web technologies transformed the mechanisms and dynamics of society, as the whole of networked relations constituting it (Floridi, 2019). Across socio-cultural and economic domains, the constant reconfiguration of social ties and relational boundaries depends on the level of technology-mediated interactions as much as access to data and information. In this respect, the pandemic provided an extraordinary example of rapid reconfigurations, with digital tracking of individual and collective health (Bullock, et al., 2020; Fagherazzi, et al., 2020), and remote teaching, learning and working (Williamson, et al., 2020; Barbieri, et al., 2021). Social transformations are not univocal or uniquely determined by digital ICTs. These transformations imply a proactive role of socio-cultural agents involved in the process with an increasingly limited autonomy resulting from data-driven predictability of behaviour and the instrumentarian power exerted by surveillance capitalists “through the automated medium of ubiquitous computational architecture of ‘smart’ networked devices, things and spaces.” [4Links to an external site.]As argued by Floridi (2015), the ongoing digital transition is entrenched in social experiences and virtual-real contexts characterised by a profusion of information, hyperconnectivity, and people-nature-artefacts interactions. Cultural influences are key to understanding and effectively addressing the blurring of virtual-physical environments, primacy of interactions over entities and distinctions between human, machine and nature. Through a system of shared symbols, ethical codes, regulations, meanings and behaviour (Mead, 1934; Geertz, 1973), it is possible to make sense of a complex, dynamic and networked digital environment, in which we are living, to better foresee its sustainable implications (Levin and Mamlok, 2021). As such, digital technologies should be considered as active agents of transformation being influenced and influencing society and culture, rather than a means to an end. The use of ICT for health and well-being presents several ethical issues over data protection (privacy) and autonomous self-tracking and health monitoring by individuals (Burr, et al., 2020). Forms of psychological and emotional conditions (anxiety [5Links to an external site.], alienation [6Links to an external site.] and fear of missing out [7Links to an external site.]) are emerging from excessive use of smartphones and computers, particularly among young people (Rosen, et al., 2018). Issues over technology-mediated education are related to pedagogical re-location in different space-time environments, digital literacy and an emphasis on quantifiable performances (Williamson, et al., 2020; Skinner, et al., 2021). ICTs are heightening problems identified decades ago, such as issues resulting from a lack of face-to-face interactions with teachers and peers (Sherry, 1995). The current work-from-home trend is raising similar issues over the negative effects on a work-life balance (Barbieri, et al., 2021), a digital divide across industries and among employees (as not all jobs are “remotable”), surveillance and productivity (Aloisi and de Stefano, 2022). Public services digitisation and online public participation in decision-making also reveals issues mainly related to digital divides, social cohesion and public-private governance (Bouzguenda, et al., 2019; Tomor, et al., 2019).Table 1Links to an external site. shows a concise account of the issues and challenges for identified socio-cultural domains, including some common and interrelated themes from the literature. As a result of hyperconnectivity and the pervasive use of data, information, algorithms and digital platforms, most of these issues tend to emerge from a blurring of traditional public and private spheres. Onlife experiences raise concerns over individual and collective rights, with norms and values often at odds with each other, requiring appropriate forms of systemic governance (Floridi, 2015; Royakkers, et al., 2018; Lovett and Thomas, 2021). This applies to conflicting issues of data protection, public safety/security and surveillance (boyd and Crawford, 2012; Aloisi and de Stefano, 2022; Compagnucci, et al., 2022). Major events like terrorist attacks and the recent COVID-19 pandemic clearly showed how public safety imperatives affected individual rights of control over personal data and information collection, storage and use (privacy). Through a political condition of surveillance exceptionalism (Zuboff, 2019), personal data were collected and analysed by public and private companies to predict individual behaviour. In a context of different approaches to data and information privacy, across world regions, the introduction of surveillance technologies has been accepted before considering negative consequences over privacy.EconomicSustainable development discourses are historically driven by economics. An idea of prosperity based upon an effective and efficient generation and distribution of wealth guided a search for solutions and viable alternative approaches to address the socio-environmental effects of economic growth (Jackson, 2009). This view of growth underpinning neoliberal market-based economies has been assimilated into sustainable development debates. The problem of growth and progress gradually turned into “manageable” solutions (Purvis, et al., 2019), with early radical critiques of capitalist economic expansion resurfacing in degrowth, circular economy and green economic discourses (Meadows, et al., 1972; Belmonte-Ureña, et al., 2021). In focusing on prosperity (degrowth), waste and pollution (circular economy) and ecological implications (green economy), however, the approaches to sustainability tend to rely on an instrumental view of ICTs in production and consumption dynamics. This view has applied blockchain technology for circular economy benefits (Kouhizadeh, et al., 2020; Upadhyay, et al., 2021), or in green economy narratives (Howson, 2021; Parmentola, et al., 2022). Aside from socially constructed views of technology by degrowth advocates (Kerschner, et al., 2018), ICTs are mostly associated with a correction of market-based failures unable to address related ecological threats (Avgerou, 2003; Hess, 2012). Technology is identified as enabler and a solution to the socio-environmental effects of global production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Digital transformation and the Industry 4.0 [8Links to an external site.] approach are thought by some to somehow contribute to economic and environmental sustainability (Ghobakhloo, 2020). This is mainly true if this approach is better refined and evolved as stated by Dixson-Declève, et al. (2022):“Industry 4.0 paradigm, as currently conceived, is not fit for purpose in a context of climate crisis and planetary emergency, nor does it address deep social tensions. On the contrary, it is structurally aligned with the optimisation of business models and economic thinking as the root causes of the threats we now face. The current digital economy is a winner-takes-all model creating technological monopoly or oligopoly and giant wealth inequality.” [9Links to an external site.]A small number of dominant digital players control their core markets and receive the majority of profits by neutralising the ability of capitalism to innovate, destroy and reinvent itself. There is currently little chance to succeed in challenging Google’s dominance in online searching or disrupt the Apple and Google’s wireless operating system duopoly, because of both time and capital needed.Industry 4.0 lacks key design and performance dimensions that are indispensable in making systemic transformations possible and to ensure a necessary decoupling of resource and material use from negative environmental, climate and societal impacts. What is really needed is a vision of ICTs and “smart technologies” as tools that need to be applied only after a thorough reconsideration and revision of organizational and operational processes in any industry or social entity tested over a long period of time. A holistic and systemic account of socio-economic issues raised by the digital economy has been hardly considered in the literature (Cricelli and Strazzullo, 2021).In terms of ideal Pareto efficiency (Sen, 1975), the role of technology and innovation in the steady shift of the production-possibility frontier is consistent with market-based growth of financial and economic systems (Mankiw, 2015) [10Links to an external site.]. Digitisation of our socio-economic world (online shopping and other forms of financial/economic transactions) has also become one of the key drivers of neoliberal forms of globalisation (Yeganeh, 2019). Global e-commerce drives increased consumption and a creation of more disposable waste creating further concerns developing from digital economies (Dwivedi, et al., 2022). By expanding digital trends, post-pandemic economies will likely further a dematerialisation of payments, transactions and work activities. The creation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as a more stable alternative to private cryptocurrencies and the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are some examples of transformations to international monetary systems and value chains (Echarte Fernández, et al., 2021; Parham and Breitinger, 2022). Similarly, various flavors of remote working will eventually transform urban economies through diverse ways of travelling, teaching, learning and living (Batty, 2022).Considering current and forecasted inflation rates and higher costs of living, due to the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war (Seller, 2022), socio-economic inequities cannot be ignored in digital economies. These are often defined by oligopolistic competition, intangibles and complex network effects in multi-sided and data-driven markets (Nuccio and Guerzoni, 2019; Smyrnaios, 2018; Osburg and Lohrmann, 2017). Self-learning algorithms are changing the nature of labour as we know it, with concerns over social security, welfare and circumvented legislation typical of the “gig economy”. Alongside a commodification of labour, with a high degree of flexibility and decreasing levels of protection for workers (de Stefano, 2017), the uneven production and distribution of wealth appears to be expanding with concentration in the hands of a few digital global players parallel the exponential growth of online retailers (Huws, 2014; Stark and Pais, 2020).The digital economy clearly generates both positive and negative externalities, as described in Table 2Links to an external site.. Alongside a negative impact on social welfare, labour market instability and abuse of market power (de Stefano, 2017; Goldfarb and Tucker, 2019), positive externalities concern the growth of human and social capital nurtured by explicit and tacit knowledge flows (knowledge spillover), lessening informational gaps and assisting decision-making on some socio-economic issues (Spence, 2021). However, the paradoxical nature of the digital economy suggests that early dilemmas of economic growth still exist today. Despite promises from technological innovation for productivity growth, the current trend of some significant structural factors (i.e., decline in labour-force participation, population aging and migration flows) revived arguments for secular stagnation, in turn questioning assumptions of perpetual growth (Jackson, 2019; Probst, 2019; Magnani, 2022). Inequities, risks, security and economic vulnerability are likely to emerge from an exponential growth of e-commerce, financial technology (fintech) and digital market expansion. While inequalities and vulnerability might be broadly associated with an expansion of existing economic disparities, digital divide and fintech (Mogaji, et al., 2021; Yue, et al., 2022), the growing rate of cybercrime coupled with a massive collection and monetisation of consumer data raises the level of risks and security for people, groups and even countries unable to afford adequate skills and protection (Najaf, et al., 2021; Jung, et al., 2022). By considering current and future inequalities, market power concentration and governance in digital economies, policies and regulations need to address the challenging complexity of ever-changing digital ecosystems to achieve socio-economic sustainability, without overlooking the commodification of labour, market power concentration and algorithmic lending (Hindman, 2018; Bruckner, 2018; Hiller and Jones, 2022)….7. Concluding remarksSustainability has evolved around a notion of socio-economic and environmental development where technology and innovation are instrumental in achieving ever changing goals. This view, however, seems to overlook the profound transformations caused by the proliferation, diffusion and pervasive use of ICTs across sustainable development. Their emissions are significant and growing (Freitag, et al., 2021) and thereby affecting the environment; unresolved digital divides relative to geography, gender, and socio-economic conditions exerts an influence on social sustainability (Hidalgo, et al., 2020; Lythreatis, et al., 2021); and economic sustainability is often disputable (Madudova, et al., 2018). Even if technological progress as enabler of sustainable behaviours corroborates a strong connection between sustainability and innovation (Aricò, 2014), “this relationship is explored by researchers and considered by practitioners almost exclusively in terms of the degree of sustainability of technological solutions” often “lacking an in-depth exploration of how a product or process, in addition to being environmentally and socio-economically sustainable, must or can also be technologically sustainable” [31Links to an external site.]. Thus, technology should be recognised as both a solution for sustainability issues and an active part of those same issues.As such, this paper attempted to address this non-mutual exclusive duality of ICTs, noting that growing attention to digital sustainability has still to be matched by efforts of researchers and practitioners to effectively address socio-economic and environmental issues that are arising from current physical-virtual environments. The limited availability of simulation modelling for digital sustainability demonstrates how ICTs are hardly incorporated as proactive agents influencing and being influenced by current and future socio-ecological ecosystems (Moon, 2017; Moallemi, et al., 2021). The integration of technological and innovation dimensions will undoubtedly increase levels of complexity in simulation modelling, requiring additional efforts to represent existing real world ecosystem complexity. Overlooking, excluding or considering ICTs as merely instrumental, however, can result in models and simulation different from cyber-physical ecosystems being represented, with effects on predictive scenarios and decision-making for targeted sustainability issues.Digital sustainability research still lacks an over-arching strategic and comparative approach as much as appropriate theoretical underpinnings, with sustainability as dominant and separate, “rather than a joint term, when put in relation to digital” in literature [32Links to an external site.]. As critically described by Seele [33Links to an external site.], the current digital sustainability vision builds upon “yet existing technologies, but not yet targeted in a unified way on sustainable development” by following a “normative direction rather than a utopian idea of what could be possible with devices not yet existing.” Cowls, et al. (2023) warn of the same risks for smart ICTs, like AI, overlooking “responsive, evidence-based, and effective governance” in their use to combat climate change. By addressing digital transformations through a participatory approach, the Sustainability in the Digital Age initiative (https://sustainabilitydigitalage.orgLinks to an external site.) seems to align with this vision. It demonstrates how research communities and institutions are sensitive to sustainability and the potential to further theoretical and practical knowledge within current and future socio-economic and environmental digital-physical ecosystems. /