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Digital and Sustainability Transitions in Society

Research platform for cross-disciplinary and cross-organisational collaboration

New digital frontiers of resource use: Panel discussion on 27 November

Welcome to a panel discussion on the digitalisation of resource use! The event will begin with each panelist providing a short introduction to their research and perspective on the digitalisation of resource use. Following these opening presentations, the discussion will be opened to the audience for questions and reflections.

  • Time: Thursday 27 November 2025, 12:15–13:45
  • Place: Pinni B1097 (Kanslerinrinne 1), Tampere University centre campus

In recent years there has been public recognition that digitalisation and digital infrastructures are not “immaterial” or virtual, but on the contrary require vast amounts of natural resources. Digital infrastructures require rare earth minerals, water, vast amounts of energy and sheer physical space, as shown by discussions about where data centres should be located. Wider attention to this topic is welcome, especially as critical researchers of natural resource extraction have focused on this topic for a long time. What has received comparatively less attention is how digital infrastructures and software also increasingly mediate the use of natural resources, for example through modelling of forests or various platforms used to manage labour and resources.

In this panel discussion, we focus on how digital systems increasingly affect how we use and conceptualise “resources”. The panel discussion explores what practical effects digital systems and software have on resource use, how they change our understanding of resources, what new resources are created with increased focus on digitalisation and what new frontiers are created in the process.

The panelists are:

  • Adi Kuntsman (Manchester University), who has studied “smart cities” and questions of digital refusal
  • Xin Liu (University of Turku), who has examined digital modelling as well as smart cities (with Kuntsman)
  • Ilona Steiler (Tampere University), who has studied how labour is mediated via platforms
  • Heikki Wilenius (University of Helsinki), who studies how large language models affect the work of software developers.

The panel is chaired by Tuomas Tammisto (Tampere University), who has examined road management systems (together with Wilenius).

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This panel is organised by a DigiSus-funded project “The resource use of digitalisation and the digitalisation of resource use: New frontiers of digital and environmental sustainability”.