Technology and Innovation Sustainability

I was invited for a panel discussion at the International Conference on Contemporary Management (ICCM) 2024, hosted by the Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce, University of Jaffna, under the theme “Inspiring Change for Global Sustainability.” The other panelists covered Economic Sustainability and Social Sustainability, while I was given the topic of Technological and Innovation Sustainability. Following was my take on this.

The relationship between technology, innovation, and sustainability is complex. The best analogy I can think of is that it’s an ‘இடியப்ப சிக்கல்,’ similar to how tangled a string hopper is. From time to time, technology comes in, disrupts the status quo, and breaks the existing equilibrium. Let’s assume my livelihood depended on riding a horse cart; then the industrial revolution happened, making my skill and job redundant. From my perspective, technological advancement would have seemed a bad thing and unsustainable. But if you zoom out and look at the macro level as a whole, science, technology, and innovation have pushed humanity forward and improved the quality of life.

Before I start sharing my two cents, I feel it’s important to confess that I am a technology optimist, so you might want to take what I say with a pinch of salt. Perhaps this is not the best time to make this confession publicly, given the current debate on the possible existential threat to humankind due to AI. I also clearly understand that AI’s disruption will be several magnitudes higher than anything we have seen in the past.

In the near future, with humans walking around with brain interfaces connected to AI and AI intersecting with the physical world, it’s hard to imagine the second-order effects of these developments. But I still believe that if we can use it wisely, innovation and technology can make our lives better and hopefully make the world a better place. If the existential threat comes to life, then all the above will be just wishful thinking, so it has to be handled with care.

To illustrate the complex relationship between technology and sustainability, let me ask you a question.

Here is an email I generated using an LLM.

It’s around 1000 tokens, which is 800 words in length. Can you guess the total energy consumed to generate the above text?

According to benchmarks available from GPT-3, it’s equivalent to having a 10-watt LED bulb on for 30 hours straight or charging your mobile phone 20 times. This can be generated using the ‘free’ package itself, and although as an individual you are not paying for it, it does consume substantial energy. You hope that this is clean energy.

I am not trying to tell you not to use these new technologies but to highlight that all of these, especially during their initial periods, have costs, and one of the biggest costs would be in terms of sustainability. This gives entrepreneurs, innovators, and technologists the opportunity to improve and fix these issues and for consumers to become fully aware of the overall impact of things, even if it might be ‘free’ to you.

When speaking about the sustainability of technology and innovation, I think it’s important we look at this from two perspectives:

1. How do we sustain innovation and technology?
2. How do we encourage the creation of sustainable innovations and technologies?

Firstly, how do we sustain innovation and technology?

You might think that innovation and technology are well-greased machines, and why would we even need to think of sustaining them?

Let me ask this question:

What are the similarities in the above three?

On the left, it’s Thanjai Periya Kovil; in the center, Sigiriya; on the right, the pyramids.

Even today’s architects, using today’s technology and tools, struggle to explain how each of these was built. It becomes nearly impossible to explain how they were constructed with what we believe were the technologies and tools available then. This is proof that somewhere down the line, this knowledge was lost and forgotten. This is one of the reasons I am a big fan of the open-source community. It has allowed people to build on the work of others and push humanity forward while ensuring there is sustainability for innovation and technology.

This forgetting doesn’t happen only on this scale; it’s happening in our own villages. Rewind 50 to 100 years, and you’d see our ancestors had sustainable solutions, which today are going out of fashion, practice, and will become innovations again someday when someone from the West brings them back, makes them cool, and sells them at a premium.

I vividly remember my grandmother summoning us all and feeding us tasty பழஞ்சோறு. This is healthy fermented rice. It ticks many boxes with respect to sustainability, especially reducing the rice from going to waste.

The same applies to walking and cycling. Today, European cities are becoming walking and cycling-only zones. It’s a healthy lifestyle with zero emissions.

Palmyrah is something we have been blessed with in abundance. From packaging to food to cosmetics, the opportunities are countless. I spent a day at the Palmyrah Research Institute and saw for myself how the innovative research and sustainable technologies are still waiting for entrepreneurs to get a technology transfer and monetize.

Today, most of us have forgotten these things. We haven’t branded them. We haven’t made them cool. We haven’t explored enough to see if they can be an economic opportunity. These and many others from our generational knowledge tick all the boxes with respect to sustainability. With the number of conscious customers growing globally, by intersecting this generational knowledge and lived experience with technology and storytelling, we have opportunities to exploit while doing good for the planet.

This is something we deeply care about at Yarl IT Hub. At Uki, our technology school, we encourage youngsters to find problems to solve at the intersection of technology and their lived experiences. Those who have done this have gone on to build successful companies that are hard to copy.

Secondly, how do we encourage the creation of sustainable innovations and technologies?

We need to recognize that this is a funnel-building exercise. On a larger scale, we need to create awareness of the need to be conscious consumers and conscious creators and the moral responsibility of having a net positive impact on the planet.

Ensuring that everyone has access and opportunities to work in this space is crucial. A child in Thunukkai should have an equal opportunity to access innovations and technologies as much as a child in San Francisco.

Awareness and access creation are two things that Yarl IT Hub is deeply involved in. Our Puthiya Payanagel book program engages more than 5000 grade 6 to 9 students to engage in STEM and ‘making’ in a gamified method.

The level two book this year was entirely on reducing, recycling, reusing, and making using garbage. The idea is these seeds need to be planted at scale.

We also need to ensure there are incentives in place to encourage the consumption and creation of sustainable solutions.

For example, at Yarl IT Hub’s pitch competition this year, there is a special prize for the best sustainable agri-tech solution.

One classic example of seeing how incentives by policymakers can make massive behavioral changes is something I noticed in Norway. In Oslo, if you step outside, you’d see a lot of Teslas and electric vehicles. A nation of around 5 million people today is one of the top 5 markets for Tesla globally. At one time, it was the largest market for Tesla outside of the US.

In summary, it is on us as individuals to be conscious consumers and conscious makers. We have to ensure we leave this place better than how we found it.