The task becomes to bring values into technology you develop.
Dr Maria Angela Ferrario is a Senior Research Associate at Lancaster Management School working on Catalyst, an EPRSC funded community-led research project aimed at developing next generation digital technologies for social innovation. Her research interests lie in innovation studies, interdisciplinary research methods and the impact of digital innovation on society. We talk about the On Supply initiative on the Isle of Tiree and using participatory development to overcome tensions between innovation and sustainability.
Talking points
There is a thread – understanding of human relationships and human dynamics, how we interact and how this is communicated.
Digital innovation for social innovation, and what sustainability means in that.
The sustainability of life on the planet as a frame has been a the forefront of my mind since I was a teenager.
I had a problem, innovation, especially digital innovation seems to be contrasting with sustainability. So I questioned that a lot.
(Italian philosopher) Innovation is going to happen, you decide whether it happens with or without values you believe in.
The task becomes to bring values into technology you develop.
Being open to change, and values of democracy and participation at the core of technology.
Respect for people we work with – the people we work with are equal partners in research.
How technology could first investigate and then facilitate the synchronisation of energy consumption to the time varying availability of renewable energy supply.
We used to have energy on demand, now that is not the case, what does that mean to our daily behaviour?
Energy as a community resource
Core characteristic is the time varying ability of energy supply
(Children exploring with energy treasure hunt) thinking about energy as positive force you can harness, but also something you need to respect.
A Real butterfly affect…you do not know the reach or the ripples of your actions…that a child found a previously thought extinct butterfly on a school trip exploring energy makes me hopeful there are many different entry points to complex societal problems – they can be tackled in many different ways.
The most important thing is a mind set that is open to change and also open to let things go, and also open to transcendence.
Our participants were most definitely co-developers.
Establishing an empathetic relationship with the element (wind) makes the value of the number deeper and more connected to action and change.
(from participant) “…we are in a privileged position to learn to synchronise our lives to natural rhythm.
If I can adapt my life to the production of natural renewable energy that won’t be to the detriment of the planet, I don’t see why I’m not going to use my time to do that.
The key motivation for people was to learn how to synchronise their consumption behaviour to the availability of clean energy for a time when renewable clean energy has a bigger share in the basket
We are aware that at the moment we have energy whenever we want, but we are also aware that we are having a detrimental impact on the environment
So it’s a good thing for me to prepare to change my patterns of consumption for a time when renewable energy is going to be more available and at the same time learn practices that are less aggressive on the prospect of sustainability of life for the planet of the future.
Even I, totally committed to the sustainability agenda, found myself going to the shop to buy a coffee (after experimenting with a self imposed rule of not brewing a coffee when the campus wind turbine wasn’t spinning).
This mentality of “I need it, I need it now”, is so ingrained in us. We need to accept that, or weakness, but it’s good to be aware of that. It’s good to play with technologies that unearth that.
We learned we live in an industrial age still. The 9-5 pattern, going to work regardless of the light…we started thinking, what if our life practices were more in tune with seasonal patterns.
I’m very conscious that energy is a metaphor for climate change, sustainability.
The way we approach sustainability should be grounded
(Motivation?) The life on the planet. I’m not religous but I quite treasure the fact that I had the opportunity to be alive on the planet, and like me, the billions of different people and creatures.
For me, sustainability is giving the opportunity to this life to be self sustaining.
(Activist?) Active but not activist
(Challenge?) Sustaining myself because when you start getting your head around the complexity of the word sustainability, you can see how you may try to work on a path of values that are quite contrasting from the mainstream, so it’s a bit of a compromise between the two.
(Miracle?) For me the miracle is that everybody at the same time will wake up with a magic wand – the most interesting experience of seeing how people decide to have the world look like.
(Advice?) Use less the word “wrong” and ask more the question “why?” whenever we hear words and sentences from people we do not agree with.
