Keynote - Robert Davison

Digital Futures for a Sustainable Society

Robert Davison
Professor of Information Systems
City University of Hong Kong

The pressure to create a (more) sustainable society is mounting. Digital technologies can and will play a role in this.

In this keynote, I explore this topic with reference to some counterintuitive examples and identify both some of the practical challenges and research opportunities that lie ahead. I will illustrate the emerging situation with stories from a variety of global settings, north and south.

For instance, in order to be physically present at this conference, I have to fly about 10 hours, a journey that will (round trip) generate approximately 9 tonnes of CO2. Is that defensible? To compensate for the CO2 I’d need to plant (and care for for the term of their natural lives) 330 trees. But we humans very much prefer physical proximity, not remoteness. Switching to digital will change who we are, how we interact, how we live, but do we really want to change and how might we research these topics? These are some of the existential and essential issues that I will raise in this keynote.

Biographical Sketch

Robert Davison is a Professor of Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the use and misuse of information systems, especially with respect to problem solving, guanxi formation and knowledge management. He is particularly known for his scholarship in the domain of action research.

Robert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Information Systems Journal and the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. He is also Chair of IFIP’s Technical Committee 9 (ICT and Society). As a researcher and as an editor, he seeks to promote both an inclusive and an indigenous perspective to research. Read more about Robert Davison’s research.