Ready for the impact

TALKS

Scenario:

They had deluded us that the digital would have helped us to live in a more sustainable way, decreasing our emissions, but research says that if sending 20 emails a day for a year creates the same emissions of CO2 as a car which travels 1000 kilometres, if I make a video-call of an hour I consume 2 litres of water, 300 of my searches on Google consume the energy needed to boil a litre of water starting from  20° and if I watch a film of 2 hours in streaming in 4K I consume as much as on a car journey of 45 minutes! But in my small way, can I do something?

A discussion with a popularizing and educational approach on the sustainability of streaming platforms.

The meeting was conceived in collaboration with some students on the MICA Mater’s course of the Università Cattolica, in a wider project which sees them involved in designer a greener festival, which also has educational parts as well as practical actions in sustainable mobility, the reduction of consumption the choice of materials etc.

The talk aims not only to stress the critical points of the Internet and platforms, but propose ideas, practical solutions and virtuous examples. The idea came about from the deluded expectations of digital sustainability, put forward by the supporters of the digital revolution more than 30 years ago. We know now that the energy consumptions of the Internet, of the Cloud, of streaming and of AI are enormous. And increasingly, starting from the restrictions laid down by the corona virus pandemic, film festivals have also started to use the services of the platforms of video contents on demand. Recognizing ourselves as part of the problem, we would like to propose a critical comprehension of the functioning and consumption of the digital world, discussing the issues but trying to fins possible solutions and ideas to limit our environmental impact as a festival, from the digital point of view, but not only.

Conversations and reflections on how to contain the impact and consumption of digital platforms and AI with:

Luca Barra - Full professor in Television and digital media at the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna

Cristiano De Nobili - Physicist, Lead AI Scientist, Climate Tech Advisor

Pietro Minto - Journalist, he writes for Il Foglio and Il Post. His latest book is What AI Dreams (UTET)

Nadia Mirabella - Scientist, researcher and consultant, co-founder of Chloe Sustainability

Giuseppe Palazzo - Co-author of Digital Ecology (Altreconomia) and collaborator of Pandora Rivista and the collective N.i.n.a – Nè intelligente né artificiale