A Digital Future of Resilience: What Can We Learn from Ecological Thinking?

Due to the nomadic character of digital technology, digitalization easily crosses the institutional boundaries of modernity, interconnecting everything with everything. However, such connectivity makes it difficult to trace and explain the broader dynamics of digitalization, which can easily turn runaway and haunt us in the future with potentially catastrophic intensity. A myriad of examples already give testimony to the possibility of such a digital future, ranging from the polarization of political discourse through Facebook to the colonization of urban neighborhoods through Airbnb. In response, I draw on ecological thinking to expand upon possibilities for tracing and explaining the wide-reaching, boundary-crossing effects of digitalization and the runaway dynamics they may lead to. Yet, while ecological thinking lends itself to critiquing technological attitudes of quick-fixes, colonization, and exploitation, it has yet to demonstrate its potential for guiding alternative practices toward a better digital future. Hence, I will focus on possible avenues for developing such practices by discussing the notion of “resilience” as a guiding principle. For this purpose, I will draw on the seven principles of enhancing resilience developed by Biggs et al. (2012) as central categories for a digital future that is more responsive to a world increasingly marked by precarity and crisis.