Is digitalization a problem solver or a fire accelerator? Situating digital technologies in sustainability discourses

Abstract

Starting from the framework of the ‘futures of sustainability’ this article asks whether or not digital technologies are discursively framed in such a way that they can offer a solution to socio-ecological problems. The initial observation is that the mediation and interactions of digitalization and sustainability have recently been the subject of political debates. Using the mapping procedure of situational analysis, the discourses around digital technologies as they emerge in the ideal-typical paths of sustainability – modernization, transformation and control – are identified and presented. The results show that similar technologies provoke varying discourses in the three possibility spaces of future sustainability, which can also be attributed to different normative foundations.