Degrowth and Digital Culture
Chapter
Author(s) / editor(s):
Sy Taffel
Year: 2025
Abstract:
Exponential growth has been a key marker of ‘progress’ throughout the histories of computational media and digital cultures. It is associated with rapid change, ‘disruptive innovation’ and the mantra of ‘move fast and break things.’ Conversely, recent years have seen a surge in interest in degrowth aligned perspectives, largely arising from globalized capitalism’s thoroughgoing failure to adequately address the climate crisis, coupled with mounting evidence that climate change is only one of multiple planetary boundaries that have been breached. Degrowth and postgrowth positions contend that ecological crises cannot be equitably resolved without rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and material use at a global level, and that a just transition requires a radical redistribution of resources and wealth. While digital technologies are positioned as central to ‘green growth,’ degrowth productively challenges whether this dominant narrative will produce equitable or sustainable futures. This chapter transposes the concepts of conviviality and limits that are central to degrowth and postgrowth perspectives, considering how they could be applied to reorient digital cultures that are presently geared towards commodification, datafication and exponential growth.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111316857-045
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