International event debates digital sustainability

The lead researcher of the Electronic Business and Government Lab (e:lab) and professor of FGV’s Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE), Luiz Antonio Joia, attended the South America Expert Round Table (ERT) on Digital Sustainability, held at PUC do Paraná, in Curitiba, on August 9 and 10, 2018. The initiative is led by professor Roland Scholz and supported by professors Peter Paryce and Gerald Steiner from Danube University Krems, in Austria. The South America ERT is the third roundtable following the ERTs held in Japan and Europe. The purpose of the ERTs is to better understand the unexpected consequences of digital transformation, based on an interdisciplinary approach, including economic and industrial changes, environmental systems, genetics, ethics, sustainable development, global social changes, cybersecurity, and data analytics. During the event, professor Joia shared some propositions regarding “The Dark Side of Information and Communication Technlogy”, such as the real potential of social media to erode democracy in emerging countries such as Brazil, besides the major psychological dependency caused by the excessive use of information and communication technologies around the world. At the end of each ERT, a scientific paper is written collectively and published in the Sustainability journal (H=42 and IF=2.075), available on the website.