Digital Sustainability: Why digital transformation is the road to sustainability

We have less than ten years from the date fixed by the United Nations to fulfill the goals of Agenda 2030. These years will see the fundamental role of digital technology, which will determine the possibility to win most of the challenges of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. To achieve this goal, Governments, factories, and human beings need to understand the role of the digital. They also need to understand how to use it. They will be called to make significant decisions concerning these vital topics and the new instruments that affect our lives. Stefano Epifani’s book deals systematically, straightforwardly, and extensively exploring the points of contact between digital technologies and their impacts on sustainability. He underlines the opportunities and also the threats to our society. Is digital technology bad or good? Will Artificial Intelligence help create new jobs, or will it annihilate them? Do social network improve or impoverish human relationships? These are just a few popular questions about the digital, but they are actually wrong. The vital and most important questions to ask are how and how much technology will help enhance our lives and become a sustainability instrument. The book provides a series of answers, explained through Valerio, Anna, Alfio, Domenico, and Carla’s stories. Five people, five different jobs, everyone dealing with a fast-changing world. Everyone is forced to reconsider the old ways of living and working in the light of the new world. Five stories, used as food for thought about the impacts of digital transformation. Five stories used to perceive that we need to be the protagonists of the change brought about by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, social media, big data, blockchain, virtual reality. Five stories to understand the concept of digital sustainability: all the different declinations of technology to build the sustainable development models defined by Agenda 2030’s goals. Five stories through which we discover technologies, market scenarios, and choices that we – individually and socially – need to make to let the digital become a real opportunity to build a better world.