IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020 - 6

human affairs, based on deep social
knowledge and a resourcefulness
rooted in a sensitive awareness
to the local environment and the
need for its sustainability. Building on the foundational insights
of these three books, I argue here
that some collective behavior that
supports sustainability entails some
individual inconvenience: many
small acts of environmental kindness require some thought, effort,
or consideration (e.g., sorting the
recycling, walking instead of driving to improve air quality, using
refillable bottles to reduce plastic
pollution, etc.). However, people
across the world today are enduring

and present the artefact to another.
This would serve three purposes.
First, giving the artetfact bestowed
prestige on the giver, while possessing the artefact bestowed prestige
on the recipient, and enhanced the
social status of both. Second, possession was temporary, and would
oblige the recipient to get in another canoe, paddle at some risk to a
neighboring island, and present the
artefact to yet another islander (it
was considered particularly "poor
form" to retain a gift for long; those
who did quickly acquired a bad reputation). Third, the ceremonies that
accompanied the exchange served
to strengthen partnerships and relationships not just between islanders
but also island communities, and
established mutual assurances of a
friendly reception, reciprocal assistance, and joint protection.
Norberg-Hodge's fieldwork was
conducted in Ladakh, a mountainous region of Kashmir in India
between the Himalayas to the south
and Tibet to the north. Her book
covers a continuous period of about
15 years but is divided into three
parts. The first part is an anthropological study of a society and a culture that not just survived, but even
thrived, in an inhospitable environment. It is a sympathetic analysis
of human ingenuity (for example
in the deployment of limited local
resources for food, fuel, construction, etc.), human adaptability (for
example, living at high altitude and
with extreme weather), and human
values (for example in attitudes to
life, death, time, and what constituted "wealth"). However, once the
financial and technological barriers to travel and transport were
reduced, the region became more
accessible to trade and tourism,
and consequently more economically viable for the extraction of
its natural resources, particularly water. As a result, the second part

iting the fundamental message of
these three publications and working through their implications for
sustainability in the Digital Society.

Three Anniversaries

The anniversaries celebrating the
publication of the three foundational books are as follows.
Firstly, 2022 marks the centenary of the publication of Branislaw Malinowski's Argonauts of the
Western Pacific [3], a pioneering
work in anthropology and ethnography. Secondly, 2021 marks the 30th
anniversary of the publication of
Ancient Futures by Helena NorbergHodge [4], a trenchant critique of the
impact of industrialization and globalization on a
relatively isolated culture.
Thirdly, 2020 marks another
30th anniversary, the publiMany small acts of environmental
cation of Elinor Ostrom's
Governing the Commons
kindness require some thought,
[5], the original analysis
of sustainable commoneffort, or consideration.
pool resource management
based on self- governing
significant inconvenience caused by
institutions. The fundamental contrilockdowns, even voluntarily confinebution of this latter work to political
ments, because the perception of the
economics was one of the reasons
threat is of sufficient magnitude and
that Ostrom was awarded the Nobel
immediacy. Therefore, the challenge
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciencis not just to get more people to reces in 2009.
ognize that climate change poses just
Each of these pioneering works
such a threat, but that tolerating a
was founded in the detail of extensmall amount of inconvenience (relasive and careful fieldwork.
tively speaking) is actually a contriFieldwork
bution to the much greater good of
Malinowski undertook fieldwork in
defusing that threat.
the Trobriand Islands, an archipelaThis specia l issue explores
go on the eastern coast of New Guinthe potential role of A r t i f ic i a l
ea in the western Pacific Ocean. As
Intelligence (AI) and other digital
part of this work, he observed the
technologies in helping to deal
Kula ring: this was a system of
with small-scale inconvenience in
exchange between islanders based
pursuit of planetary-scale collective
on trading non-use, but nevertheaction. Here I provide some context
less socially valuable, artefacts, like
for the opportunities and challenges
necklaces and armbands. An islandof leveraging digital technologies to
er would get in a canoe, paddle at
help manage the inconveniences of
some risk to a neighboring island,
tackling the climate crisis, by revis-

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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JUNE 2020

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020

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