The role of technology in achieving the future we want

Stewart Wallis, Lindsay Barbieri, Alice Damiano and Matthew Burke

Chapter 4 in Sustainable Wellbeing Futures, 2020, pp 45-60 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Technology has the potential to be a major support in the necessary shift to a wellbeing economy. This potential will only be realised, however, if we as a scholarly community can collectively start evaluating all technological innovations though the lens of ecological economics by assessing their impact on sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation. Furthermore, democratic governance of technology is crucial to ensure that technologies are designed and chosen for community good, ownership and gains are distributed fairly, and potential harms are averted or mitigated. Technological unemployment and ecological limits will require us to focus on resource productivity rather than labour productivity and to radically rethink work both in terms of our main source of income and in terms of our purpose in life. To enable this, we highlight the need to further develop two new concepts: economic security for all, and the encouragement and recognition of real value creation in all spheres of life whether a paid job is involved or not. Without these measures, technology is likely to cause further ecological and societal harm and make the prospects of achieving our desired future shift to a wellbeing economy much harder.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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