Perhaps the greatest challenge that the European Community faces is that the lifestyle which it supports and promotes, and indeed which it wishes to extend to others beyond its existing boundaries, is in fact not sustainable in the long term.

We already consume too much of the world's finite material resources: ever more material consumption by ever more people is clearly not sustainable, and yet the aspiration that ever more people should share the European lifestyle is clearly legitimate.

The ASSIST study is exploring how the new Information Society Technologies of computing and communications, IST, can be used to support global sustainability, not simply by making consumer goods more efficient in their use of materials, but rather by replacing them with completely new types of goods that are inherently more sustainable because they involve very little material use. In this way, ever more people may enjoy the European lifestyle whilst stress on the environment is nonetheless reduced. This is the topic known as immaterialisation:

Immaterialisation consists of switching from  physically based clusters of satisfiers for human needs, to alternative clusters of satisfiers for those same needs, which vastly reduce the material element of the consumption involved. Immaterialisation is thus a switch: it is quite distinct from the process of progressive dematerialisation (or increasing eco-efficiency). One specific class of immaterialisation is that in which IST lies at the heart of the substituted cluster of satisfiers.

2. The Wider Picture

ASSIST accepts that the developing world cannot be prevented from joining the consumer society of the west, and nor should it be. What is needed instead  is a new low-impact consumer society that is every bit as satisfying but vastly less damaging to the environment than today's material-intensive model. Enhanced production efficiency alone is unlikely to achieve this, so that sustainability cannot be achieved merely by making (for instance) travel and industry more efficient: entirely new lifestyles are required. In these our happiness will not be defined by how much we consume, but by the quality of our lives. ASSIST thus complements earlier work on the dematerialisation of manufacturing processes by exploring the additional, and potentially more substantial, benefits of immaterialising the consumption needs of society.

ASSIST will thus contribute to the definition of a new consumer society that will support a broader view of quality of life rather than just the narrow limitations of standard of living so that Europe can maintain and enhance its particular qualities and standards and yet still make a full contribution to global sustainability.

3. Outlining the Solution

The ASSIST approach is to work from an understanding of human needs towards the identification of new IST based satisfiers for those needs. This understanding is particularly necessary because the new satisfiers are not straightforward or obvious one for one replacements for existing material intensive satisfiers.

For instance it has long been understood that it is not possible to simply and totally replace a face to face meeting by a networked meeting; neither is a simple satisfier of a single human need.  The journey to and from the meeting, as one example, is often an enjoyable kinaesthetic experience. For another, the contact with colleagues on the way to and from the meeting room can be socially satisfying as well as professionally rewarding.  The new package of IST intensive satisfiers must satisfy all such associated needs more effectively than before: perhaps the mornings e-mail interactions will replace aspects of the social contact, and some quite different activity, e.g. a half hour in the local gym will replace the kinaesthetic experience. This new IST intensive package has to be significantly better than the complete meeting package if global sustainability is to be achieved by IST pull rather than by regulatory push.

It seems increasingly likely that trying to achieve global sustainability by increasing the efficiency of consumer goods is doomed to failure because of two rebound effects: increased efficiency leads to increased sales, and the global middle class is growing faster than these goods are improving in efficiency. Immaterialisation also has rebounds, but they are not necessarily either so different or so damaging as for dematerialisation.

Two immaterialisation rebounds must be addressed: spending power released in the switch (say from an expensive journey to an inexpensive multimedia conversation); and additional spending power arising from the rapid dematerialisation typical of IST intensive solutions. In each case it is necessary to encourage expenditure on other IST intensive satisfiers rather than (say) unsustainable activities such as faster cars, more spacious houses and increased travel to meet new friends from networked meetings. ASSIST will outline what needs to be done to ensure the new IST intensive satisfiers are attractive enough to achieve a degree of immaterialisation that reduces and eventually reverses environmental stress such as the growth in greenhouse gases, whilst expanding rather than contracting consumer choice.

4. Technical Approach

·        Identifying from within existing work in sociology, economics and psychology a new understanding of consumption that will help to identify where material goods can be superseded by immaterial experiences. This is done by means of a state-of-art survey utilising targeted questionnaires; document search, and including a multi-disciplinary workshop to identify the extent and progress of related work.

• Analysing existing early examples of immaterialisation created by existing ISTs to achieve a better understanding of their evolving potential as IST services continue to improve, and as networks mature from supporting primarily  one way transfer of information to two way peer to peer exchanges between people
• Testing the ASSIST analysis by applying it to proposed future Intelliroom products; to proposed  facilities for the disabled; and also to existing examples of e-work, e-learning and e-leisure as concrete examples, highlighting how future advances in IST can lead to including social, haptic and kinaesthetic satisfiers of needs, and how the developing network society and our relationship to it will affect our lives. (As well as how our lives, and the choices we make, will affect it).

·        Using this ASSIST research as a basis for preparing recommendations on the future European research agenda and on the necessary public policy background that will extend the impact of new technology to the whole of society, not just the leading edge consumers.

·        Encouraging wider policy debate on the crucial importance of this contribution of IST to sustainability. The outcomes will be presented at a conference making concrete recommendations for development of the European and specifically IST work programmes.

5. Expected Impact

ASSIST will thus  facilitate the necessary move  towards  sustainability by identifying and elaborating the cultural climate that is a pre-requisite to making immaterialisation possible. It will identify potentially fruitful areas of future research and development to support understanding of the necessary IST products and services.  These new areas will include work tending to a greater understanding of the nature of current and future lifestyles; to a recognition that immaterialisation offers benefits of its own to lifestyles, rather than being merely a substitute for material goods, and ultimately to the implementation of a full range of IST facilitators for lifestyles which are both satisfying and sustainable, to the benefit of the European Community and of Global Sustainability.

Addico Cornix Ltd      

Penzance, Cornwall TR20 8QW

UK

BARCO N.V. 

Kortrijk B-8500

Belgium

Babbage Institute for Knowledge & IT

Gent B-9000

Belgium

Digital World Research Centre

University of Surrey GU2 7XH

UK

ECO-Plan International

Paris F-75006

France

Information Society disAbilities Challenge

Zonhoven B-3520

Belgium

Vers Associates

London NW3 7AU

UK