Degrowth is coming - be ready to repair. 36C3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hPXK7BCBnY - 36C3 - Degrowth is coming - be ready to repair - english translation

((((((ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION & UNOFFICIAL NATIVE TRANSLATION EDIT version 0.17))))))
.
[Video Description / Abstract (Google translate)]
-------------------------------
The discourse about "digitization" can do one thing above all: promise. Robots free us from tedious work, increases in efficiency take care of the protection of the environment and resources all by ourselves, and algorithms make everyday life easier. The lecture will show that these promises mainly play into the pocket of tech corporations and that we are heading towards ecological and social disasters thanks to the data-gathering (Indian) business models of digital capitalism.
Can the economy continue to grow thanks to more efficient technologies without consuming resources? Or do we not even notice in our lives, which are always full, that we are really running out of raw materials? If we very soon run out of material to build technology that fulfills all the promises - what do we do? Is the answer then repair, do it yourself, maybe even get creative?
.
The lecture shows data and graphics on the current and forecast resource and energy consumption of digital technologies. The mechanism of the rebound effect can help to understand the complex consequences of current technical developments e.g. to understand in terms of growth.
Degrowth is a political movement of scientists and activists who fight against the increasing and growing constraints of modern societies. What arguments does the degrowth movement use to address growth from an ecological perspective? And what are the starting points for resource conservation in the tech and maker movement?
.
[MODERATOR:] Hi, Welcome: Anja Höfner, Nicolas Guenot!
[TRANSLATOR:] Welcome to the translation for the talk - Degrowth is coming - be ready to repair.
.
[ANJA:]
We both work on the concept of new work economy that is an association in Leipzig that deals in question of Degrowth, post-growth and social transformation.
Our talk has the title: Degrowth is coming - be ready to repair.
Degrowth criticizes the current paradigm of economic growth and does this from current perspectives.
We want to transfer this to the process of digitization today.
And in the second part we're not only going to be talking about criticisms, but alternatives.
And Nikolai is going to show some approaches that may work with digital technology.
We sometimes talk of digitization in this talk and we want to explain what we mean by that.
It is the process of digital data production and transformation that covers ever more areas of our lives and as you can see, there are several areas where that happens.
This is a huge factor in our work and things in general where things are digitized.
It affects us on an individual level and in interpersonal communication.
And it affects how we can concern social co-determination by tools that are being used.
And it has huge influence on the environment.
We talked about this, it enters our collective consciousness more and more, and this is something we are going to be talking about today.
And these rampant areas of not yet fulfilled promises, when talking about digitization
.
[3:36]
Starting with the area of the environment, digital technology promises to dematerialize processes so that we need fewer resources to design them.
Another promise is that digital applications simplify our lives and enhance our comfort.
We no longer have to plan a route on a map beforehand, we can simply start walking and there is a device, which tells us which way to go without having to think about it.
A third promise, in the area of co-determination is a reproachment.
The internet initially wanted to simplify communication between all humans on the same level but there is a conservation of power and a commercialization of the internet.
.
[4:54]
A fourth promise is that [automation] liberates us and that it automates production.
These are images that exist in the public sphere and there are two dystopias or utopias whichever way you want to describe it or understand it.
These visions of digitization exists, so it's a spectrum of digital capitalism on the one hand or surveillance capitalism maybe, or fully automated luxury communism, where we no longer have to do anything ourselves, where we have all the time in the world and where machines do the work for us.
Both of these are problematic because surveillance capitalism is very problematic for democracy and our civil rights, but both of these only work with a large destruction of the environment and a large overuse of resources.
So both of these promise material well being but it's a question of whether or not we can get there with digital or technology, because we have already reached the point where we've exceeded some planetary boundaries.
And many people have understood that we're in the midst of a climate crisis where material well-being is no longer possible, to the extent that we have it in the global north, and it won't be possible in the future.
.
[6:56]
And this is where Degrowth comes into play.
It criticizes growth, as I mentioned initially, because many criticize this paradigm of growth and gives us alternatives for growth and a freer and more self-determined life in the future.
Where we can maybe achieve global fairness and have more time in our lives.
And I would like to claim what Degrowth is.
It stands for a transformation path towards forms of economic activity and social self-organization where the well-being of all is at the center and the ecological foundations of life are preserved.
[7:58]
This includes a fundamental change in everyday practice in dealing with one another and a comprehensive cultural change, as well as overcoming patterns of the capitalist mode of production with its growth, competition, and profit constraints.
This definition shows several points, most importantly the preservation of the ecological foundation of life and overcoming of the capitalist mode of production.
This Degrowth movement started in the 70s where the décroissants movement in France first showed up.
It has a snail icon, and an important point of that is the report of the Club of Rome.
The special thing about Degrowth is it's not only a scientific discourse, well; it's both a scientific and social discourse.
It has a strong social relation.
Since 2008 there are international Degrowth conferences that the community meets.
It started in Paris with 140 participants, and in 2014 we had the first conference in the German speaking countries with over 3000 participants and refreshed this movement that was critical of power in Leipzig, especially and the German speaking countries.
As I wanted to mention, it's not simply a criticism of the current system, it also wants to create concrete visions.
There exists this term of concrete utopias, where we try to establish strategic models, and ways of a social togetherness in the future and that enables a good life for everyone.
.
[10:24]
[CHART] = Stromungen und Strategien = Streams and strategies
There are different streams in Degrowth.
These are the terms for the different streams, I will expand on this later.
.
Post-Wachstum = Post-Growth
Intitutionen = Institutions
Suffizienz = Sufficiency
Alternativ-Okonomie = Alternative Economy
Feministisch = Feminist
Kapitalismus Kritsch = Capitalist Criticisms
.
Werte: = Values
Nowtopia -> Gegenmacht -> Radikale Realpolitik
Nowtopia -> Against Power -> Radical Real Policy
.
[…Unintelligible...]
Feminism
Strong sufficiency oriented theme.
[…Unintelligible...]
Post growth is used in the German speaking regions, but it also includes Degrowth,
And like the "décroissants" in France and the [????DeGraschiita????] in Italy.
They were the critics in this movement.
They all have in common that it's an economic and ecological criticism.
They say our economic system is wrong.
There are 5 different forms of critics.
[12:36]
1. Based on this example of economic growth and digitalization, it's not all of them, it's a part of them, and the ecological critics are fundamental and are important.
The general critics about economic growth are that it destroys the foundations of life, we cannot have endless economic growth on a finite planet.
There is no second planet, it would be a nice of course, but we don't have one.
Digitalization means we sometimes think that we could do a lot with technical growth, and by  having better technologies, we need less resources and we solve the problem like that.
But unfortunately this doesn't work.
I will say more about this later.
But we need more money and resources allowing us to make all these digital devices we use in all of our everyday lives; and it also uses energy to produce them.
.
[13:59]
[GRAPH OF PERIODIC TABLE]
This graph shows which elements are used for electronic devices.
The ones which are marked in color are:
The Conflict Materials in Orange.
Rare earths are the ones in Green.
In Yellow, we have other substances which could pose a threat.
Resources in energy are finite, and some people might think, "oh we have renewable energies, that are basically infinite", but no, this isn't the case.
There is a limited sun supply, it only shines a few hours a day, there is a finite amount of wind, etc.
The periodic table gives us a nice power.
This leads to the next topic, which is the north/south critics.
.
[15:14]
2. Next topic is a criticism of the existing system on a north/south basis.
Because as the economic growth in the northern countries should be similar to the ones in the south, because at the moment, the south is used as a cheap source of materials and workers.
This is also the same for the manufacturing processes of digital goods.
So we have destruction which is not good for the environment in the southern hemisphere and this also happens in other places, for instance in Germany, [in the, yes, ????Ezktabilia????]
This also leads to the destruction of materials, and is hazardous for the workers too.
Poses a risk for the workers.
So this is a double problem, not only ecological, but a social problem.
Looking at the other side of production, the discarding of the consumer waste, then this also ends in the global south.
The biggest production countries of waste, countries that produce the most waste per person, are in the north, of course.
We produce about 4500 times the weight of the Eiffel tower as E-waste.
And with much of them, we don't know where it goes, because recycling is not everywhere done very well.
There are also other aspects when using utilization that is discussed, is a digital divide.
.
[17:47]
[HEATMAP of WORLD MAP]
In the north, we have many more; the graph shows devices with an internet connection in 2014.
It might have changed a bit, but you can still see that there is an inequilibrium between the north and the south.
So we have an inequality between the North and the South.
Not only with the production and discarding, but also with the usage of the devices.
.
[18:32]
[FEMINIST TRIANGLE GRAPH SHOWN]
3. A third critique is the feminism critique.
Also on economical growth. They say that the economical growth as it is now is based on labor that is mostly done by women and connoted with women, and work is connoted with the idea that wage labor has to be done, and that it is mostly done in the background, and the growth is profiting wage labor, and it is creating ever more of this. If we look at digital technologies, also here are the [logistics] of production that produce these inequalities between women and men, and also because software development is still a field dominated by men. Stereotypes are produced in software that are out of date. But due to existing data sets and because there is a person behind each code, these stereotypes are reproduced. In 2014 in Germany, not even 1/5th of the people working in Digital Technologies have been women, so you can see here the inequality. And also in digital services, like for examples in platforms such as Helbling, and an off-lay of jobs [that were previously being paid]. Like for example cleaning services. These are off-layed to services and become more precarious because they are no longer in a fixed work contract.
.
[21:27]
[CAPITALIST INFOGRAPHIC SHOWN] = Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, EBay, Netflix, Facebook.
4. So a fourth stream of critical capitalism critique.
The main point here is that growth is based on production and accumulation.
It cannot be considered or comprehended without taking this point into consideration.
If we look at digital capitalism, we also see here a big concentration of power, and monopolization.
Diversity also on the internet is shrinking, [for] a time, and the most visited site that is not a commercial one is Wikipedia.
An accumulation and concentration is not only on the capital but on the data.
So we have an accumulation of data.
There is also that idea that data is the new oil.
Digital capitalism produces inequalites and exploitation, instead of alleviating some.
.
[23:01]
5. The last stream of critique I will present is the cultural critique, which considers accumulation and alienation.
People have to be ever more productive and people have to be ever faster.
Digital technologies are forcing an alienation between our workplace and are forcing an approach of workplace and freetime so that both of them become one, such a when home office is being done.
We saw that in this area of the Helbling platform where areas of life that previously were not coupled to profit are suddenly turning into profit oriented areas.
Why does that happen?
Why is growth running away,
and why can digitization as its happening today contribute to a different way?
There are several mechanisms that I want to explain.
There are three of them.
The first is the rebound effect, and there is decoupling,
And there are network effects.
I want to explain what these are, and how they work,
because it's good to know that for an analysis.
Many of you have probably heard about the rebound-effect.
It's an efficiency that's brought out about by a technology or a device, and it leads to less energy being used, but the energy that's being saved isn't actually being saved, it's instead replaced by an increase in consumption, and we may end up consuming even more.
.
[25:45]
And these rebound effects exist on several levels.
There are direct, indirect, and macro-economic [effects]:
1. Direct effect is an increase for the same goods.
 So let's say I have a lamp that uses far less power to burn for the same amount time,
 I may leave it on for longer time because I'm apparently saving energy.
 So it creates an increased demand for the same goods.
2. Indirect effects are for example me saving money with a car that uses less fuel,
and I can use that money to consume something else, for example to fly on vacation.
3. Macro-economic effects are effects that happen by one person saving energy that is then still on the market, as additional supply, which drives down price and stimulates demand.
And somebody else ends up consuming that resource.
And this happens a lot with digital technology, because you have a constant increase in efficiency, computation gets ever cheaper and yet we compute ever more.
Streaming is another great example, we no longer have to drive somewhere to get a DVD, there's less input required from us to reach our goal of watching a movie, and this means that we consume more.
.
[27:45]
The second mechanism that I want to explain and that is de-coupling.
De-coupling is the idea that the economy continues to grow without an increase in the consumption of resources.
There is a relative and absolute de-coupling - thats not very important.
But digitization is often combined with a contribution/[attribution] to dematerialization.
But people tend to forget the material basis behinds all of these devices.
There is no cloud, just other people's computers.
There is no digital service without a material infrastructure behind it.
.
[28:35]
And thirdly there's the network effect.
It explains how the "use" we get from one product changes when the number of consumers increases.
So if I have a telephone, I don't get a lot of use out of it, if theres only one person who owns a telephone.
But if three people have a telephone, then I can call a lot more people.
And if lots of people have a telephone, then I have the highest use for my telephone.
It's obvious, that platforms - digital platforms, exhibit this effect.
A platform is more successful the more users it has.
That's why monopolies are able to develop - digital monopolies, such as Amazon, or Facebook or Whatsapp.
The more people use it the higher use I get out it.
But this is not solely positive because it leads to monopolies and it makes it difficult for alternatives to appear.
I can't simply start my own social network because I need a certain number of users before it becomes attractive, so there's a fairly high initial cost.
And maybe there are alternatives despite this blockade.
And this is what Nikolai is going to show you.
.
[30:30]
[NIKOLAI:]
Thank you Anja. We continue.
We are now at the point where we saw and heard what is the current economic state.
It doesn't look that good, we have some problems.
.
[30:55]
[INFOGRAPHIC] = "Degrowth by disaster" (1891-2018)
You can see we are driving towards a cliff which probably everybody knows, this is a known graphic.
This is "use" between the 19th century [and present day].
We see the temperatures in the years, and we see high temperatures are becoming more often.
So Somehow the Earth is getting warmer, obviously.
We have the problem that, yes, this is a problem.
And we stand in front of a big contradiction.
On one side, for economic reasons, we would like to solve the economic growth, which would be good for an economic and maybe a social perspective, but on the other hand we have to solve the foundation for our own lives, and these are two different goals.
We have a problem with the term of progress.
So talking about progress, what should this mean?, should it mean more production?, should it mean more efficiency?, then we can continue going into this direction.
So this is the current state, where we could say OK, we have to go Degrowth one day or another.
I'd like this to end.
Resources are exhausted, for instance Oil or Rare-earth materials, coal, etc.
And we are going to a direction that where there is obviously no more future - to go through this long term.
This leads to big problems, because what will happen when we have these problems and it may too late?
.
[33:22]
[INFOGRAPHIC] = "Degrowth by design!"
Another idea is to fore bring the idea of Degrowth.
To make a decision that we want to Degrowth before this, before we run out of resources.
It is a decision which would be more rational.
It's also more rational than most decisions of capitalism which are only profit based and it would be a really important decision.
This means we have to re-organize our entire life, and the economy.
In this example of mobility, you could still try to save our cars, faster cars, more cars, or new technology cars.
But, we could also take a completely other technology, for instance the bicycle, which is much more sustainable.
But this is more complicated for digital technology.
So we need to evaluate different criteria and tools, on how to solve this.
.
[34:41]
The question about criteria leads to us having to decide on how we want to proceed.
How we want to do Degrowth.
In the Degrowth movement we usually discuss about [what we want everyday life to look like].
.
[PICTURE OF CLIMATE CAMP] (a small festival/gathering) = "Ein gutes leiben fur all" = "A good life for everyone"
I always liked this picture. This is in a climate camp.
It looks very well, but maybe this is not the utopia for everyone.
Not everyone would like to have this.
So this question about a good life for everyone really depends on taste of everyone [individually].
It has to provide a certain liberty.
But we also have to see that it should be a good life for all,
not a really nice life for some of us, which we currently have in the North.
This is of course a difficult thing, because it needs other principles.
One of these principles is sufficiency.
Which means I don't need more and more, I don't have my own car, I maybe share it.
But this needs an active decision that my life should not have a negative impact on others lives.
Its not an individual question, it's a question of how to do the entire economy and the entire life.
Considering digital goods and digital tools, this also has an influence.
So maybe we should do something, a deceleration of our digital life.
Currently we need a big infrastructure but we have nice real-time communication,
but maybe we could have a less powerful infrastructure that allows maybe less-fast communication.
For instance, email, they're still quite fast, maybe it would be nice to have to read less emails per day.
And also less data retention is a good keyword.
So produce less data, store less data, so use less resources to store data.
It's also good from a privacy point of view as well.
So we have discussed what is a good life for everyone, how do we make it fair?
Because maybe some people will be afraid of this, because they can't do everything again that they have now.
Some people would maybe like to do certain things but it's not possible anymore.
The answer will be to have a dialog.
Everybody would have to see what would be right for his or her life, and which parts are maybe not needed anymore.
Everybody needs to see that this is a question of: everyone has the right to it.
We need to redistribute goods in our system.
.
[39:00]
[PICTURE OF FAVELAS] (shanty towns) = "Alles muss anders warden" = "Everything has to change"
This has to mean that those who are wealthier at the moment, they will have less,
but it also means that those who are poor at the moment will have more.
It's a question of fairness and a question of sharing.
One thinks this should work very easily with digital goods.
But here it is important to take into consideration the economic costs.
Because there is always this question of the infrastructure and the raw materials so we have to decide what should be shared, and how, and to what cost.
Sharing is a very complicated question.
We can also look at our everyday lives and how we use technology.
Maybe this technology will help us make this decision, how to share, how to live.
.
[40:18]
[PICTURE OF OLD WOODEN REPAIR BENCH] = "Langlebigkeit und Reparatur" = "Longevity and repair"
A very important aspect is repairing and longevity of things.
That the things that we use may be kept up for longer than a few weeks or few years.
And we have to ask ourselves, was that easier or better before? It was mainly different before.
To repair things meant to have to use fewer resources, and also the tools were easier to use back then.
There was no update for your hammer, and there were no problems with things that weren't usable after an update anymore.
Today we have more complicated tools, more complicated technologies that make it more complicated to repair and use over a long time.
Regarding repairing things, it's important to think of hardware and software as one.
If software is no longer updated, is it still usable? And hardware is no longer usable as well.
One idea of repairing it might be to write your own software for it, even if it's no longer officially supported.
It's important to take into account these aspects.
.
[42:12]
[PICTURE OF ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT ON BREADBOARD] = "Modularitat" = "Modularity"
Modularity is a very important aspect of this.
You notice [this] in software, but it's also for repairing, a very important concept.
It's very different from what we know nowadays about smart phones, and it's very important that we try to fit the software and hardware to our needs.
.
[42:43]
[PICTURE OF BLUEPRINT OF A LEGO WINDMILL] = "Offene Standards" = "Open Standards"
There's also a question of standards.
If we want to repair things, we want to know how the technology works.
Hardware has to be more open source, but there are also more questions and complications following this.
Questions of transparency, questions of privacy.
Which data should be transparent, which shouldn't? My data shouldn't be transparent but maybe the data of the companies should be.
There's the question of standardization.
It's important because standards are needed to resolve complex problems such as longevity of usage of software and hardware, so that the economical costs are reduced or lessened.
.
[44:00]
[PICTURE OF HOSES/NOZZLES FOR MIST SHOWER HACK KIT] = "Old- und Low-Tech" = "Old and Low Tech"
An important point is which technology are we using, and is that tech high-technology or cutting-edge, very nice.
But there's other forms of technologies that are very interesting, such as low-tech or old-tech.
There are many tools that we used but don't use them any more because there's no software anymore.
But there are people like hackers that take old tools and look at these and try to use them again, and to continue using these resources.
It's known, and you have to decide what do we want, do we want new features or do we want things that have longevity.
This is a point where you also have to look at software and hardware together you cannot consider them separately.
This question of what is the technology, and also a very important point, is who is using it, who is developing it.
.
[45:48]
[PICTURE OF ROSIE THE RIVETER] = "Technik von allen fur alle" = "Technology by all for all"
Anja talked about the feminism critique.
This is an important point.
Who develops software and hardware and for whom is it developed.
How do we share this technology?
We are now nearing the end.
.
[46:16]
[LIST OF 4 DEGROWTH ACADEMIC PAPERS/ARTICLES] (german)
1. Degrowth/Postwachstum - zur Einfuhrung
    Matthias Schmelzer / Andrea Vetter
    Junius Verlag
2. Die Welt reparieren - Open Source und Selbermachen als postkapitalistiche Praxis
    Andrea Baier / Tom Hansing / Christa Muller / Karin Werner (Hg.)
    Transcript Verlag
3. Degrowth - Handbuch fur eine neue Ara
    Federico Demaria / Giorgios Kallis / Giacomo D'Alisa (Hrsg.)
    oekom Verlag
4. Degrowth in Bewegung(en) - 32 alternative Wege zur sozial-okologischen Transformation
    Konzeptwerk Neue Okonomie e.V / DFG-Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften (Hrsg.)
     oekom Verlag
So we brought some literature tips with us, so if you want to inform yourself on Degrowth, there is an introductory book.
The first one [1], which is also interesting and the points Nikolai also brought up.
And the second one [2] is called "Repairing the World". You can download it from [.........]
Another book [3] is a collection from 2016.
There is also a book [4] that summarizes and describes the different streams in the Degrowth movement.
And now, we've talked about many points such as modularity, longevity, these are also what we asked about during the #bitsunbaeume conference, and there were 11 propositions and demands that we want digital technologies to procure a better profession in the future.
So we also have an assembly and we are in the about:future cluster in the CCL.
You're welcome to join us there to discuss.
And please continue to repair instead of constructing things.
Thank you for coming, thank you for your attention and now we have some time for your questions.
.
[48:46]
[APPLAUSE!]
.
[TRANSLATORS TALKING]
You've been listening to "Waffle?, Fama?, Filma?, and Pascalina?"
If you have any feedback, we'd be very grateful to receive an email from you
hello @ C3lingo.org [Email]
Or you can Tweet @ us @C3Lingo or use the Hashtag #C3T [Twitter]
.
[MODERATOR:] We are going to take questions now and we are going to start with microphone 3.
.
[49:13]
[Question #1:] I have one question about the slow communication. Because somehow this is not that intuitive for me. If we transmit less information, this somehow makes sense to me. For example, not transmitting too many bytes of data. But for example having slower communication, not having instant chat, or telephony anymore - they don't use much data. How do you see this, or did I understand it wrong?
.
[Answer #1:] It's hard to determine beforehand what we're going to do with the resources that we have and will have in the future. But Data volume is a large question, that I'm very interested in; this idea of slowness. There was a talk yesterday of a person speaking about regions in India where some villages don't have any access to the Internet, and some people rode their motorbike, collected emails from everyone, and passed them on. This was an interesting example of creating your own infrastructure. This slows down communication but maybe it's easier.
.
[MODERATOR:] Thank you. Lets continue @ microphone 2 please.
.
[Question #2:] I like all your ideas. But at our company, this would probably be unsuccessful because it is not cost efficient. So my question is how can we make this more appealing to companies? How can we sell it?
.
[Answer #2:] It's always a bit complicated. Its a large step that if a company were operated by a collective, where people working for the company are allowed to determine, then they would be happy to work less and produce less. So it would be nice to have these criteria, instead of this growth paradigm, and the question is how do we get to this point?
Can we say that this path is not sustainable but somehow raise the large question of changing priorities? I understand that this is difficult. But it remains true that we have to deal with this. There is a clear path compared to small steps that get us there, that we have to re-imagine.
.
[Question #3:] You said that we have to resign from things, and I think this is true, not only because of the problems you described in the first part. I'm ready to resign those things but how can I be sure that this really has an impact, and it's not the case that somebody else just uses more.
.
[Answer #3:] In the Degrowth introductory book, there are strategies. Because its one thing to have ideas, but we also have to secure these concepts for a long term, and ensure that these aren't concerned by capitalism. …["lost my train of thought"]…
[Q #3 continued:] How can I be sure my resigning really has an impact ?
[A #3 continued:] We already have this today. It relieves my conscience when I consume responsibly. But I want to be sure that this doesn't stimulate more consumption in society, and of course network effects may lead to renewed monopolies.  That's why open interfaces request this #bitsunbaeume movement. Because that would mean that it doesn't matter if I'm on Facebook, because I could use Facebook to communicate with someone who uses Twitter or Mastodon. So having these interfaces would be one approach against this concentration of power.
.
[Question #4:] Hello and thank you for your talk. It's exciting to see this happen in a bigger audience. Last time was at the bitsunbaeume conference. I thought this sounded quite freeing and inviting to people. How is this thought being continued now?
.
[Answer #4:] There are no ideas that I know of to create a large conference. But we decided to liberate this name and say that anybody who wants to create a non-commercial conference is welcome to do that, so if you know people from different paths of the spectrum, then do it. And there are some continuations, for example there was a one day conference in May in Dresden this year which dealt with questions of renewability. There are mailing lists, there are associations, there are forums, where these topics are being discussed and I think there is even a group within the CCC that tries to bring these topics onto the agenda, but it's unsure how the large conference is going to develop. But of course we want to continue - but it's a question of capacity also.
.
[MODERATOR:] Allow me to say that Anya worked on a book about this topic. "The Connection Between Bits and Trees".
[ANJA:] You can even download it as a PDF from the publishing house.
[MODERATOR:] Next topic.
.
[Question #5:] Is there a kind of consulting company, where companies could hire people who are already into this topic?
.
[Answer #5:] The Institute for Ecological Economical research did a study of this where they wrote portraits of societies that develop companies that don't want to grow any further. [?Premium coder?] is another example of a company that says, "We do what we do and we don't want to expand". This is interesting because these are examples that might be cool for you to see, maybe their strategies of arguing. And I know of one other person who works on this topic. Come see me after the talk.
.
[MODERATOR:] Thank you: Anja Höfner, Nicolas Guenot!
.
[END.]
.












-Not affiliated or involved with any person referenced, all credit goes to them.
[LICENSE.TXT]
-This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
-To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
-Transcribed entirely by hand, Abei Villafañe, December 30, 2019
 (some amount of minimal linguistic/artistic liberty was required to be taken, but only to further enhance the translation)