Reclaiming the stacks: how ICT workers can contribute to a transition to ecosocialism

In the final synthesis of the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's scientists presented a stark final warning to humanity: we are destroying the planet, and we need 'deep, rapid, and sustained' reduction in emissions in order to avoid irreversible loss and damage to nature and people (IPCC, 2023). Along with the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated the need for climate action 'by every country and every sector and on every timeframe'(UN Press, 2023). For those of us that work in the ever-growing sector of information and communication technology (ICT) we face the question: what action should we take?

The IPCC is unequivocal as to the cause of the crises of our times: human activity (IPCC, 2023, p. 4). We are altering the planet to such a degree that the change has been proposed as its own geological epoch: the Anthropocene (Syvitski et al., 2020). Others hone this further, asserting that it is not the presence of humans per se that is the cause, but the very particular configuration of our recent social history: capitalism and growth (Hickel, 2020). We are in the Capitalocene, and only an alternative to capitalism will get us out of it (Moore, 2017).

In all of this, one of the sectors with a major role to play is ICT. Computing and communication devices are integral to our society - from our phones to our computers to the servers and global infrastructure that networks them together. ICT has a significant environmental impact of its own through the lifecycle of its physical devices (Freitag et al., 2021), but also an enabling and structural effect on the impact of other sectors and society in general (Hilty and Aebischer, 2015).

With such impact, ICT has the potential to be a liberatory technology at scale. Yet, much of ICT has been captured for capitalist ends. The `Big Tech' corporations are some of the largest capitalist structures in the world. They represent the majority of companies to have ever attained over $1 trillion in market capitalization (Monica, 2021). The result is "an intensification of labour and environmental exploitation on a planetary scale" (Likavčan and Scholz-Wäckerle, 2022)¹. The paradigm of digital capitalism needs to be undone if we are to stand a chance of combatting climate change. What can challenge its dominance?

This research investigates what an ecosocialist programme for ICT could look like, and how ICT workers can contribute to this programme.

Sustainable development and the sustainable development goals are well-known organising principles that aim to put people and planet first (United Nations, 2015). Sustainable development is an approach to economic activity that explicitly recognises the interdependence of environmental and socio-economic issues, and the need to move beyond an economy that grows without considering the limits of the planet.

Hopwood, Mellor and OʼBrien (2005) acknowledge the positive direction of sustainable development's core messages, but criticise the lack of programmatic definition of how to achieve its goals. They map out various existing approaches to organising society and the economy, assessing their strength on the dual axes of environmental concerns and socio-economic equity. Depending on the strength for each of these concerns, the approaches are grouped into three areas of sustainable development - Status Quo, Reform and Transformation. Figure 1 shows this mapping.

Status Quo approaches ignore the urgency of the crises, asserting that a strategy of `business as usual' is sufficient, and that a continued pursuit of economic growth and technological development through markets will eventually resolve them. Reform approaches believe that change is needed, but that such change can happen slowly over time, through gentle reforms to markets and government policies. Transformation approaches are more radical, asserting that the solution lies only within deep societal transformation away from growth and capitalism.

Hopwood, Mellor and OʼBrien (2005) argue that status quo approaches have caused the current crises, and that reform alone will not be effective in the short window of time that we have. They argue that approaches based on transformation are essential, backed by pragmatic short-term reforms to facilitate transition.² There is a substantial body of work making the detailed case for transformation (e.g. Klein, 2014; Hickel, 2020), with the global consensus of the IPCC being the latest, most mainstream addition to this.

ICTs throughout history have had a significant impact on society, affecting politics, economy, labour, production, consumption and resource use (Creutzig et al., 2022). This impact continues to this day, with the present incarnation of digital ICT ("digitalization") having a huge impact on the world (The World in 2050, 2019).

ICT is an industry that spans many layers of society. In a traditional, technical sense, it is a combination of software, hardware and communications infrastructure stacked upon one another. Broader definitions of ICT range philosophically further, viewing it as an ecology of design, materials, humans, nonhumans, values, politics, and more (e.g. Bratton (2015)). ICT facilitates the activities of much of modern society, even when viewed in a purely technical sense. Viewed in the wider sense, ICT and digitalization is all-encompassing of everyday life.

A number of contemporary works have presented programmes for an ecological or socialist ICT (Kleiner, 2010; Medina, 2014; Likavčan and Scholz-Wäckerle, 2018; Lovink, 2020; Schneider, 2022; Creutzig et al., 2022; Muldoon, 2022; Tarnoff, 2022; Kwet, 2022; Smith, 2022)). In this section I review these through the lens of ecosocialism, looking for common principles, example initiatives and evaluative criteria that are contained within them.

An initiative is an existing, real-word example of an ecosocialist ICT that an ICT worker could support today. By outlining example initiatives, and identifying different criteria with which they can be evaluated, as ICT workers we can identify initiatives which are the most opportune for us to contribute to.

As outlined by Albert (2022), ecosocialists must go beyond simply defining a wish list of things that we want to achieve, and must critically discuss how we might go about achieving them. In our domain, it is important to focus on steps of transition from digital capitalism to digital ecosocialism.

For the ICT worker, one approach to this is participating in praxis that supports initiatives of ecosocialist ICT. Based on the criteria above, an ICT worker can find initiatives that lie close to intersection of their expertise and interests. The classic socialist slogan is to "educate, agitate and organise." For any given initiative, an ICT worker can support it by learning about it; sharing it and teaching it to others; and directly contributing skills or financial support to the initiative.

In order to prevent social and environmental disaster, all sectors of society need to engage in a rapid change towards sustainability. ICT, with both a direct and indirect effect on emissions and societal activity, is integral in this. Ecosocialist ICT is an alternative to capitalist ICT, and as concerned ICT workers we can contribute to the necessary transition by supporting ecosocialist ICT initiatives.

A programme of ecosocialist ICT combines resistance and regulation with the building of alternatives. Many building blocks and blueprints are here already: initiatives such as libre software and creative commons; platform coops and tech coops; federated and democratically governed social media platforms; data commons and data trusts; strike actions, worker empowerment and campaigns against exploitative practices; the deconstruction of intellectual property laws; regulation against monopolistic practices and early obsolescence; and many more.

We as ICT workers can contribute to a transition by building and supporting these initiatives. In this research I have reviewed existing programmes and presented a set of criteria for ICT workers to pick out initiatives that they can best support. Big Tech will not be challenged by maintaining the status quo; as concerned ICT workers we need to urgently agitate, organise and educate to foster transformative initiatives for an ecosocialist ICT.