Sustainability in a Digital World Needs Trust

Abstract

The concept of Sustainability has been widely discussed over the last decades, mainly with a focus on ecological sustainability. Looking at the origin of the sustainability concept some 300 years ago, this is not surprising. Over the last years, though, three ‘pillars’ or ‘circles’ of Sustainability have emerged (ecologic, economic and social) and they found their way even into the Annual Reports of companies, under the name of Triple-Bottom-Line Reporting. But the ecological aspect still outweighs the other two focus areas. This contribution argues, that Social Sustainability will become at least as important as Ecological Sustainability in the future, and the reason for this is Digitalization of our world. We see new technologies every day and we are mostly fascinated, despite a partial lack of fully understanding the implications this might have for societies. Looking at the manifold positive impacts digitalization can have on businesses and people, it is sometimes overlooked what consequences it might have on how we live together and interact with each other. While ecological changes and challenges are visible, social changes and challenges are often less obvious and only show up much later. We are moving towards a data driven economy, that is governed and managed increasingly by algorithms and having significant impacts on our jobs that are often threatened to be replaced by (ro-)bots. These three aspects—Data, Algorithms and Bots—are in the center of this contribution. It will discuss potential outcomes, show its impact on society and finally argues that the way to create Social Sustainability in a digital world comes through new ways of Trust. Trust to ideas, systems and people (Botsman, Currency of trust. http://rachelbotsman.com/thinking/. Accessed 22 Nov 2016, 2016). The ‘new’ digital world is based on trust like never before. And only with a strong focus of trust will we be able to create and sustain a society we want in a digital world.