Foreword

Jonathon Porritt

If we're to believe the hype from the dot-coms, the internet is changing everything for the better. Reduced prices, increased convenience, wider choice and at the same time it's all great for the environment because everything is going ‘virtual’.

But here's one tiny slice of a countervailing reality. A friend of ours in London has become an extremely enthusiastic user of e-shopping services, and buys all her ‘bulk stuff’ (the washing powder, loo paper and industrial quantities of breakfast cereals for the kids) over the internet. Yet she also regularly nips down (in the car) to her nearest store for all the fresh produce and to check out any new bargains. So when you add the emissions from the delivery van to the emissions from a loyal shopper, you actually end up with a net increase, rather than any decrease.

We can't of course generalize from one small example. In fact, as this collection of fascinating research papers and provocative think pieces makes clear, almost any generalization about the environmental and social consequences of the new economy is hard to substantiate. Businesses and consumers are using the new technologies in all sorts of different ways to suit all sorts of different purposes.

And that is exactly why Forum for the Future set up the Digital Futures project in the first place – to get a snapshot of where we are as the new economy really begins to bite, and to explore how we make the most of the opportunities that this brave new world offers. To do this, we brought together a quite unique consortium of Government departments, private sector interests (from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ economies) and some of the UK's leading think-tanks and NGOs.

Part of the challenge for those involved was that there's still so little hard and fast evidence. We may be witnessing the onset of the digital revolution, but until now there's been very little information for policy makers and opinion formers to go on.

Against that backdrop, it's inevitable that such a study raises as many questions as it manages to answer. But as you'll see, the relentless optimism of today's e-entrepreneurs appears to be a fair reflection of the potential for these new technologies to help deliver real social and environmental benefits.

One reason for this is the profound shift towards innovation and entrepreneurship. This capability is transforming every sector, from agriculture to aerospace, pharmaceuticals to farming. When I hear advocates of the new economy saying that we need to rethink the role of policy, regulation and traditional institutions, that we need to understand and value intangible assets, that we need to foster creativity and innovation, I can't help feeling the green economic agenda is strikingly similar.

But we are unlikely to reap these benefits without a lot more forward planning and anticipatory framing of the market. Inevitably, there are many discordant notes in today's electronic symphony, including a disturbing strand of digital determinism (‘that's where the technologies are taking us, brother, and there's nothing anyone can do about it’), a sometimes bullying bravado (‘get wired, my friend, or get bankrupt’), and more than a touch of complacent insouciance at the dark side of these bright new technologies – especially in terms of the potential loss of privacy and the growing intrusiveness in our lives.

For environmental and social justice campaigners, we've seen all this techno-determinism before. And as both Government and business now seek to retrofit policy to mitigate and repair some of the damage done through the old industrial economy, this is precisely the time for practitioners of the new economy to avoid falling into the same old trap. It would be a shame to screw up quite so badly with the digital revolution as we did with the Industrial Revolution, knowing so much more this time round about how best to avoid some of the more damaging social and environmental outcomes.

For me, the single most important conclusion to emerge from this early research into an extraordinarily exciting future is that the worst thing we can do is to stand back in awe or be swept unthinkingly along by the sheer pace and scale of technological change.

It's been inspiring to see the way in which both our private sector and Government partners in this project have engaged so frankly and constructively in those potential dilemmas. Many of these are reflected in the ‘agenda for a sustainable digital economy’, which appears in the Introduction.

E-business sits at a crossroads. Is it going to head down the old economy route of putting profit before planet and people, or can it lead the way towards more sustainable, accountable forms of capitalism? Amidst all the turmoil, there is everything to play for.