Battery-free phone, solar-powered website or roaming Internet: what would greener digital technology look like?

“Today, good practice or eco-design guides suggest doing the same thing as before with very little loss of comfort.“, regrets Thomas Thibault. The inspiration library wants to present “radical, different experiences” with reflections on the foundations of digital technology, on its economic model and its concrete impacts. We therefore find projects like those of Common or Telecoopwhich question our relationship to screens in the broad sense. “We want to break this discourse of dematerialization, of the virtuality of the cloud. Show how we can, through interactions, talk about technical materialities“.

A portal to greener digital

Each of the ideas is classified according to its stage of advancement (simple prototype/experimentation idea and concept already disseminated), according to the user licenses linked to any products presented and according to the action levers to which it calls. For example, we find 19 ideas for “reduce or limit flows“, 15 for “optimize resource consumption” and 9 for “allow less digital uses“.

“There is a real work of editorialization, editing, categorization“, notes Thomas Thibault, who specifies that new “inspirations” will arrive regularly in packs of 5, 10 or 20. Be careful though, “It is not because we have published an inspiration from a company that we consider that it has a policy that meets the challenges.“. The idea is precisely to draw inspiration from what is being done all over the world to create suitable tools.

Because if the site (obviously eco-designed) is accessible to everyone, it is especially aimed at those who design today’s digital world, in order to give them perspectives different from those dictated by the web giants. “Our goal is to produce knowledge. The problem is that researchers sometimes work on obscure things. This is where we come in“, jokes Thomas Thibault. And the appetite seems to be there.”We know that links to a somewhat crappy version of the tool were already running. It was already quite widely distributed and read“Hence the idea of ​​making a better finished version.”We have goals of 40,000 views per year“, estimates Thomas Thibault.

Beyond the flood of new inspirations which should arrive in the coming weeks, a blog part “with case studies“should see the light of day and the platform is also intended to be translated into English to reach more people.”In France, we are among the most advanced on these subjects, so there is an expectation, even a duty, for other countries to take up this issue.“

Halfway between a collaborative platform, a database and a blog on alter-digitism, the Limites Numériques inspiration library therefore seeks to raise awareness of digital issues in the era of climate change. “Ecodesign is not synonymous with doing less or something ugly. She is also creative“, summarizes the co-founder of Limites Numériques.

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