Digital sobriety

Digital sobriety is an approach that questions needs before optimising means. It aims to reduce the environmental footprint of digital technology by limiting unnecessary uses rather than by making existing ones more efficient.

Sobriety and efficiency

The two are often confused. They are not the same thing, and they do not always point in the same direction.

Efficiency reduces the resource consumed per unit of use: a lighter page, a more efficient processor, a better cooled data centre.

Sobriety reduces the number of units: fewer devices, fewer features, fewer stored files, fewer notifications.

Efficiency alone is insufficient because its gains tend to be reabsorbed. A cheaper use is used more, by more people, for longer, or for purposes that did not previously exist. This is the rebound effect, described in the nineteenth century as the Jevons paradox.

What it is not

Sobriety is not deprivation, nor a refusal of technology. It is the deliberate allocation of a limited resource to what is worth it.

Nor is it an individual matter. The largest choices are structural: how long equipment is kept, how services are designed, what is stored and for how long. An individual user has little influence over these.

Practical levers

• Equipment: extend useful life, repair, refurbish, buy second-hand, avoid multiplying devices ;
• Software: preserve compatibility with older hardware, since a demanding service forces its replacement ;
• Data: delete what no longer serves a purpose, avoid duplicate storage, question indefinite retention ;
• Infrastructure: size on observed load rather than theoretical peaks, switch off what is unused ;
• Uses: question the need before adding a feature, an automation or a device.

The awkward question

Sobriety eventually raises a question that efficiency avoids: is this use worth its cost. That question is not technical, and no framework answers it. It is a matter of choice, which is why sobriety is harder to implement than efficiency.

See also

• Sustainable IT · Rebound effect · Jevons paradox · Ecodesign · Low tech · End of life