This is what the most ambitious programme of public debt has been in the plans, which will distribute equal shares of grants and loans worth EUR 750,000 million over the next 7 years. Alongside the revival of Europe, it aims to promote a greener economy (energy transition) and digitisation, decarbonisation.
Since we lived in the digital age, since the Internet appeared in our lives, new digital technologies have transformed our production, communication, education or consumption models remarkably.
But the internet doesn't come from the sky, contrary to what many of us think. It's not a light, ethereal cloud. We must understand as a giant infrastructure that transmits data through intercontinental cables and macrocomputers. The largest and most complex infrastructure that we've created human beings. In theory, to achieve the dematerialization and decarbonisation of the economy, but the data do not confirm it.
"If we add to the electricity consumption of digital technologies, as some economists have done, behind the US and China would be the third world consumption (8%)"
Youtube is the company that consumes the most electricity in the world, for example. If we add to the electricity consumption of digital technologies, as some economists have done, behind the US and China would be the third world consumption (8%).
In other words, in the use of energy and materials, the Internet has not produced any dematerialisation or decarbonisation. Conversely, the energy of digital technologies and the consumption of some metallic raw materials has increased the most in the last decade and is increasing with the expansion of digitisation processes.
However, digital devices, apart from energy, need special materials (copper, lithium, cobalt, indians, rare earths..) which, along with activist dynamics, generate serious social, political and ecological problems.
Control. According to Naomi Klein, digitalisation has intensified social control with repressive intentions through the doctrine of digital shock. Corporations Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsotf (GAFAM), in addition to doing a good business with the data they get following the activities of our daily lives, do not respect the environment, are undemocratic and spy on our lives to carry out the processes of accumulation and accumulation that capitalism needs.
Finally, the hyper-digitalisation and robotisation of the economy will bring with it the destruction of millions of jobs in the coming decades. Therefore, rather than digitalising, I believe that we have to make a change of direction or backbone in order to avoid an unjust and unacceptable debt for future generations.