 Federico Luchavero is a senior researcher in ethics and data at the Ethoc Centre and the Welcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, which is part of the big data institute at the University of Oxford. We are so lucky to have her today. She is trained as a philosopher and her research covers the ethical aspects, the increasing structure of IT, often in a healthcare setting, but including the environmental sustainability of big data. This is such an important topic for us all that I suspect that all of us, including myself, have engaged with as fully as we need to in our own practice, so it couldn't be more timely, it couldn't be more urgent. I'd like to welcome Federico to begin her talk. Welcome. Thank you so much, Jess, for the fantastic introduction and thank you so much everyone for the invitation. I'm very thrilled to be here and very happy to share my research with you, but also really to learn. I'm really looking forward to the discussion that we are going to have at the end because, as Jess said, my work is mainly in the field of healthcare, and it's been in the field of healthcare and how digital transformations have changed healthcare. But with this topic, specifically on the digital transformation and sustainability, of course healthcare is one domain among many where we need to start with reflection. I'm really looking forward to the discussion because I'm really interested in knowing how things are in your field. And by the way, I love the fact that I can see people from all these different countries and I agree with Jess, it feels a little bit like travelling. So when we think about digital shifts, we often think about, we often associate them as sustainable and understand them as sustainable shifts. And we can say that we think about them as sustainable in two main ways. So the first way is that we often refer to the fact that digital products or digital projects can be shared and made reusable across time, so accessible by others in time and space. So they are sustainable because they are capable of enduring, and it is the etymological meaning and the basic meaning of sustainability. They can be shared, they can endure through time. But very often we think about the sustainability of the digital shifts also in another way, and it is in a way that they achieve a higher purpose. So we often, either intentionally or unintentionally, refer to a broader idea of sustainability linked to the idea of endurance, but it's the idea of sustainable development. And it's the idea that digital shifts are a way to achieve the goals of sustainable development. And with sustainable development, I take the definition proposed in 1987 at the UN Convention. They talked about sustainable development as a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And in thinking, in that way, usually, I mean in this definition, usually there are like three dimensions that are the belong to sustainable development that let's say articulate and explore the idea of what needs are. And usually people talk about economic needs, social needs and environmental needs. So the idea, for example, in the case of digital products or digital shifts, is that they enable more people to access service and allowing for a society that is more democratic and more just and richer in a sense. And also in the environmental sense, we think about digital shifts as a way to reduce carbon footprint, because for example, as we're doing now, we don't have to fly to meet for a meeting. We don't have to, you know, to move around. So we think also about the carbon footprint of this as something like positive as something sustainable. So we see how this idea that digital shifts are sustainable or even that they foster sustainable development. We see that this idea is reiterated in many initiatives at the national and international level that foster the positive impacts of big data, artificial technology, green IT programmes and so on. And here I just put as an example, sorry, a report from the committee commissioned by the UN in 2014 to write about the opportunities that big data initiatives offer to meet sustainable development goals. And a very interesting thing that I found when reading this report is that although the report is very interesting in the way it discusses like any ways the challenges that big data also pose to sustainable development goals in terms of inclusivity, for example, or the representativity of the people whose data are collected. One thing that is really missing is the acknowledgement that big data and digital technologies also have a considerable environmental impact. So in that sense, they are also a threat to the same value of sustainable development that the report says that they will advance. So let's look a little bit in this issue. There is actually widespread evidence that digital infrastructures have considerable environmental impact. We see that there is a growing digital demand with more than one million people coming online for the first time each day. And although this can be welcomed as a good thing and a way to move beyond the digital divide, it also means that there are more devices connected to the Internet, which is even going to increase if we think about how 5G technologies are going to increase the amount of sensors and devices that are connected to the Internet and are kind of surrounding us in our houses and in our environment, our physical environments. And that is expected to be fully in place by 2025. So according to some estimates, digital technologies share of global CO2 emission has increased from 2.5% to 3.7% between 2013 and 2018. This is a bigger impact on global warming than the entire aviation industry, whose impact is 2.5% in terms of emissions. So there are different estimates and this has to be said and not everyone agrees with that. I'll go back to that in a minute. And as well as there are different ways of trying to calculate the emissions produced by different activities. But if you think about, there is quite some evidence that music and video screaming are quite polluting, followed by, for example, bitcoin mining. That is an extremely like polluting activities. I put some estimates there just to give you a sense, of course, we should like look at the numbers and I'm aware of it. But just like to give you some examples of the type of emissions that we are talking about. Also, recently, some researchers in the States have shown how artificial intelligence models, like training one model for artificial intelligence can emit five times, can be equal to the five times emissions of a medium sized American car. So, where does this pollution come from? By browsing the web or streaming videos, as you may know, we are constantly accessing data that are located somewhere, which is like in the data centers. And these data centers are large warehouses where data servers are located. They are an important aspect of the material infrastructure that makes the internet. Together with the pipes, the transmitting towers, the idea is that there is this very large and material infrastructure around all our digital activities. That is not something like ethereal, something that stays like that according to some of our language, like the cloud language is something like a fluffy out there. It's actually like very industrial, very physical in a way. But not only requires a lot of space, data centers in particular also require large cooling system to cool down the rooms with the servers that generate a lot of heat when processing data. And it is estimated that they use about 5% of the total global energy that is, and they say that this estimate is supposed to grow. But this is not all, so data centers and energy consumption of data centers are one aspect of digital pollution, what is called digital pollution. Other environmental impacts are related to other moments in the value chain of digital products. For example, the damages to the biosphere due to the mineral extraction or the costs and emissions due to the manufacturing of digital devices. But also the emissions of toxic substances in the process of disposing electronic products. And also guess where all this practice is conducted. Well, as the pictures suggest, very often this happens in low and middle-income countries where labour is cheaper and safety measures for workers are less strict, which also means that there are less restrictions on the toxic emissions and on how these emissions can be reduced. Now, it is important, as I was saying before, to remember that there is no agreement on these estimates of future emissions. Why not? Well, because it is very difficult to measure the overall impact of digital services and digital products throughout their life cycle. As I was saying, we have to consider the different aspects of it from mineral extraction to transportations to the factory where the devices are created and to the transportations to the retailer to the actual use. So it's not just about the use. We also need to consider that there are a lot of contextual aspects when we are, for example, trying to calculate emissions that are very important to consider. And, for example, where the type of device people use to stream, for example, or to the time of the day when they do it, the type of resolution and so on. And these all changes, of course, like the estimates of the energy consumption. And, furthermore, there are rebound effects that people say we should consider. And when I'm talking about rebound effects, I'm referring to the unintentional side effects that are linked to the use of digital services. Very often people give me the example of, exactly like the example of digitising books. And they say like, well, you know, this is much more sustainable. And it's still, even if there are some emission symbols, there must be less than the one symbol that you produce when going to the library by car. And I always like to answer is like, yeah, first of all, you don't have to go to the library by car. And more seriously is, well, this needs to be calculated. And it's what seems obvious, or what seemed obvious earlier on, it's not at the moment. Because, for example, as I was saying, we have to consider how people's behaviours changes. So, for example, how people are more keen than to open up more books and browse through more books. And then, in that sense, use more data and increase their digital footprint in that sense. You know, their carbon footprint through the use of digital tools in a way that it would be then less environmentally costly if they just went to the library and they just looked at the books. Again, this is just an example and my only point, I'm not saying it is more polluting. But what I'm saying is, we need to consider all these factors and how also like digital services have an impact on people's behaviours. And we also need to consider that much data is not available, because a lot of this is of this is proprietary data so like companies will not let you access the data, the consumption data about their data centres. And also that technology is constantly evolving. And this means that some calculations that work now will not work tomorrow or will not be adequate tomorrow. At the same time, one thing that we know is that in a way studies have shown us that we cannot just rely on the technology. We cannot just rely on the technology to get better and say like, you know, there is more slow, there is the reduction of the size of the chips is making things more efficient, making the energy consumption lower. So in the end, the thing will be solved by itself. First of all, because it has been shown that actually increasing efficiency also brings an increase in use. An increase in use needs an increase in emissions in energy consumption in any ways. But also even taking into account the best possible estimates. So another one I showed you before, they were like on the zoom side, I will admit it now. But even if we take into account the best estimates, the industry still needs to reduce their emissions to zero in order to meet the Paris agreement targets of keeping global warming below 2% below to the two degrees Celsius. And you see it in this in this graph I'm showing where you see that the orange is the is the emissions and even as are the ICT related emissions and even if they remain the same as now, if all the global emissions need to lower, it means that they will still be at a very in the percentage with respect to all the global emission is going to be like high and higher. And therefore it becomes like complicated because we will need to have like good justification so why the digital industry is what sectors of the digital industry are justified to spend more. And to meet more carbon than the others. So, the point is, we need to do something about it. And what are we doing about this is we have several initiatives, for example, the clicking clean reports by Greenpeace. We have several sector initiatives that have tried to increase consumers awareness of the sustainability of the different providers of IT services. And, but there have also been some policy initiatives, both in the US and EU that try to create some rules for data centers emissions in order to reduce them. Finally, there are some self regulation initiatives like the one of the International Telecommunication Union. There are also setting goals for the industry to act against greenhouse emissions. Despite this, however, what I've seen in my field work with stakeholders in this area is that they feel that guidelines are still missing, there is no direction from public bodies, there are no common standards, and that is very much left to the willingness of the single businesses and markets to adapt to them, or to find some more sustainable solutions. So people feel in general lack of awareness and kind of a responsibility void in this field. Now, as just told you my background in philosophy and ethics, and as an ethicist and social and social sciences. So I find this responsibility gap very interesting. And why? Well, because it allows us to think broadly about this issue and think about, as I will show you in these slides, not only empirical questions about who is taking responsibility and how at the moment, and how are different roles allocated among different people in this field. But they also allow us to think about a normative question about who should take responsibility and how. And in a way these normative questions opens up a broader set of questions about not only what are like practical things that could be done and will get there in a bit, but also how, you know, what is, for example, the role of institutions in the context of this growing data economy and digitalisation of our lives, and how, you know, how they are supposed to act in that, but also what are the roles and responsibilities and actions that individual citizens not only could but should take and based on what criteria. So I found all these questions very interesting. And this is a little bit of the part of the work I'm doing. But there are just few things that I like to discuss with you this both if you're interested at a, you know, more normative theoretical level, but also at the very practical level really discussing what people in your sector in your field could do. But before we go there, let me just give you like a few, I think, I mean ideas that I found quite insightful when thinking about this issue. And first of all, when we think about responsibility, the image that most commonly comes to our mind is this one here. Basically it is about blaming somebody for some harm that they have produced on others and asking them to pay. So this is responsibility as understood in the most traditional liability model. And this is prominent, this is the prominent legal model of responsibility and is used when we think about technologies related harms. But does it work when thinking about responsibility for environmental impacts of digital shifts? So my hunch is that it doesn't. And it doesn't. First of all, because there are some diffused. So because it is basically very difficult to establish causal links between digital technology and use and the use and environmental impact. And it is a common problem in the discussion or responsibility for climate change where we see images of climate crisis in parts of the world. And yet it is very hard to create a clear causal link with some other practices happening in other parts of the world. So there are diffused effects and it is difficult to establish a causal link which doesn't help when thinking about liability. Secondly, when we think about liability, we usually think about making a causal link with something that happened in the past. So we think about it like usually like Glorious would say like exposed. So it's in a retroactive way. We look back. When we think about environmental impact and when we especially like in the context of a digital transformation that are happening now, it's not really about looking back, but we want to look forward. We want to be proactive and we want to be prospective in the way we are thinking about responsibility. Finally, it is important. One thing about liability, you know, we are thinking very often in terms of structures and organisations where people have clear roles. And again, and it's clear how it's usually, it can be determined who has a responsibility to do what and what action was missed or done that created harm. Now, in this context, we have a lot of, in the digital context, we have a lot of actors and so in a way like responsibilities are distributed among those actors. So we have talked about the infrastructure industry and so basically the industry producing, as I was saying, like the pipes that go into the data centre or the actual data centres and the servers and so on. And what is the responsibility in addressing issues of sustainability. But we also have the IT service providers and that could be like providers of platforms, like digital platforms to or like platforms that help you digitise material or that allow for video streaming. Or, you know, like Facebook or whatever. And it's interesting, I talked a lot with infrastructure industry and infrastructure industry. People were saying that in a way at the moment the issue is mostly on them rather than IT service providers haven't done any fact checking. So I need to finish my interview to actually establish whether that's the case. But again, there is this tension at least in who should do what and who should be responsible for what. Policymakers, everyone is lamenting that policymakers are not doing enough. And if they were, they probably would be lamenting that they are doing too much and being too restrictive. But the point is, like what are the responsibilities of the institutions to actually take a take control in this context and put some rules and give some guidance instead of leaving it to the market. And how about the responsibility of the users of digital services and infrastructures. And with users, I'm thinking about the providers of the social services. For example, it includes the library, the libraries because they are producing, they are using digital service in digital infrastructures to of course create another service. But it's still, they could be considered as users, as well as real end users, like the citizens, the individual, the person who is actually using the products. And what are, shall we talk about the responsibility of people to collect less data to save, to delete the data that they are connecting or to stream less or to stream only in certain times of the day. Is it about them and we see how in the dealing with issues of climate change, we often talk about individual responsibility and how individual action can have a big role in the collective. But again, how we distribute these responsibilities in this context. And then the question is, shall we think about new models of responsibilities and like collective action or think about collective responsibilities often like used in the environmental context, but would it be appropriate in the context of the digital industry and the sustainability of the digital industry. It's an open question for me, but just wanted to point out that there are other models besides the liability model. So, I've seen that I had like notifications that people are probably like including ideas to the to the public, but please do add your ideas to the public and we can, we can, we can discuss them. And especially ideas like who should act and also what can be done. And it's specifically on what can be done. There is, you probably received a link to the survey, right. I don't know if anyone has managed to have the time to to to to. Oh yes, I can see that there are some responses there. I'll just keep on adding to them. I'll just like go quickly through them, because when we think about what can be done we know as I said like as there are different actors that are also like different things that can be done. And, for example, could be about collecting data and energy consumption as I said it is not enough at the moment. And then what does it mean to do it. And this is my timer spoken, says I'm spoken enough. And what does it mean to do it at this different, different levels so not only at the higher data center levels but also the level of a smaller organizations who wants to know what is the energy consumption due to their digital activities. But it's about, for example, is focusing on digital infrastructure procurement and making sure that they are more sustainable, both when thinking about infrastructure but also when thinking about the services. When thinking about lobbying for guidance to be provided by policymakers because as I was saying there are some actions that can be taken at individual or lower levels and others that will need to be taken at higher levels and somebody, you know if policymakers are addressing it somebody will have to, you know raise their awareness on this. Some people talk about engaging in cost benefits analysis of digitalization and saying like okay, what are the good things that come from it and what are the bad things in terms of environmental costs, and can we with them. And finally, it's about another another way and it's not the only way and that's why I left it with an open question was introducing policies to ensure recycling of electronic devices tackling the issue of electronic waste. I could be done now but I'll just finish actually and by no means I want to, I mean I see that like five people actually who talked about cost benefits analysis and I'd be like really interested in hearing their thoughts on that. I must say I've been thinking about this a bit because it's a very common approach in the field of ethics and healthcare. But I see that it's very difficult to work in terms of cost benefits analysis and I just wanted to point out some issues with that that very often these analysis are based on kind of quantitative measurements. So you know it's in monetary ways you can really say okay these are the costs of this operation and these are the benefits just in terms of like counting the money really. In this context, it is hard first of all because we don't have data that is conclusive. So we are still making this analysis but the estimates vary a lot as I was telling you before. Also there is a need to engage in a discussion on benefits and drawbacks. So basically is like what are the benefits and who are these benefits for and this relates also to questions of questions of justice and social justice and how these benefits are distributed among people. The reason why I'm sometimes so suspicious of cost benefit analysis and please prove me wrong is that very often you fall into a yes or no question. So the real question I think is how to reduce environmental impact and not saying like okay yeah we have some benefits from digital technology so we don't really that hard weight the costs of the environmental costs. Seems like it's the problem is solved. Well I think that keeping it a bit broader and thinking about you know how can the problem be solved what can be done even like little steps is better. And as I said it's not a yes or no question digital technologies are there and are they to stay and they improve our lives in many ways. And this is out of question. So the question is how do we make them more sustainable. All right, I think I've spoken enough. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you so much Frederica that was absolutely wonderful I was transfixed and the time went slightly over but it was it was brilliant and that's why I wasn't, you know calling from the wings and saying, hey stop I'm really great. I am staggered by some of the figures that you are the estimates and the rapid expansion of those I shouldn't be but let's be honest I am. And also fascinated by you know the stories we tell ourselves you know there's still these pervading myths about digital that it's automatically greener, often that it's also cheaper. You know all of these things which I still hear in in in conversations I mean and talk about myth busting that was absolutely absolutely fantastic thank you. I'm going to open up to others in a moment, but I wonder just before I do so whether I could just ask you to expand a little bit on that question of social justice that you touched on the end, not least because that has been one of the themes the digital shift forum looking at issues of digital and social justice equity inclusion so would you just expand on that that relationship. I went really quickly on that actually the point there is well is basically that environmental and benefits and drawbacks are not fairly distributed among populations and groups and this is a fact we know that we have been having like activists working on environmental justice for ages. But we also need to think that the digital, the benefits and drawbacks of the digital revolution are not fairly distributed and there are like several scholars working in the field of data justice and showing how and you know you were talking about myth busting but how sometimes you know that the rhetoric of digital access is good and it will be good for everyone and it will reach everyone. It's just not true when you look at things in context. And there are some populations that are disadvantaged by the huge collection of a lot of data on them and how this data is used for example for decision making. Or I'm thinking now about like surveillance systems and criminal justice and how they are used like in the, in the, in the, by policing purposes for example. So, again, the point is, I mean here I'm talking you know with you guys and people in a way trying to really use digital technologies in, in the best possible way. At the same time there are those drawbacks and and they're thinking about how they are distributed and not always thinking from the point of view of the richer countries. As I was saying is like a lot of this environmental costs of, for example, electronic waste disposal and mineral extractions are on the shoulders of middle income countries doesn't mean that digital innovation is bad for them. But it means that we really need to think closely and think about like vulnerabilities and needs of all these different groups when asking these questions. That's so helpful. And I cannot tell you how much that is connecting to themes that have been running through other forums. I am going to begin to bring our audience in a different ways because I know there will be ways people wish to participate. I'm going to ask my colleagues in the RUK office to share the Mentimeter results. So why don't we start there by seeing what's come in. I'm going to give you a chance, Federica, to kind of absorb what you're looking at. And I wonder if you might just just sort of comment on what you're seeing there and if there's any surprises for you. Well, no, not really surprises. To be honest, it's the first time I was doing it and I was I was really curious. And then I thought it was a bit unfair for me to say, well, the risk analysis is probably not the best idea. And as I said, it's just my, I really like to be proven wrong, proven wrong on that. Yes, I think like the collecting data on energy consumption is very key because that's what many people say. It's like, if we don't have awareness, how do we, how can we change things? And there are methods and ways to do that for people living in the UK. It's interesting how the, the death rather than the department of environment and remember the full name, but how they've been working out some guidelines to actually measure the to collect data of the government office and the use of digital technologies. And there are like frameworks and methods to do that more and more. But, but it is, it is, it is an important question because it's the first point is to raise awareness. And then to understand where consumption is and what can be done. The lobbying thing, I think it is, it is, it is great. It is something that needs to be done. And again, it's part of like the building awareness and building awareness of the policy makers. I think it is, be interested in seeing or, okay, sorry. None at all. We just changed the screen. I was really taken with the relationship then between advocacy lobbying and the data. As you said, one of these particular challenges that the data is not available, it's not always easy to make the cases to the policy makers to those who hold the purse strings. And yet, you know, what does that mean? You don't actually know everything. It's, you know, a really difficult point. So the other ones, the other seven there was about engaging in cost best analysis around, particularly on digitisation for activities and looking at policy making, I guess, partly within our own libraries. But I think we'll begin to open up some of this to ask our audience, particularly if there's anyone who has got experience about how they might be tackling these more directly than their own institutions, be absolutely fascinating. And so I think that I am going to, we've got a couple of questions in the chat. Why don't I see if we've got anyone who is able just to continue the theme we've got at the moment about actions we could take within our libraries and ask members, if there's any member of the audience who is willing to kind of come in and talk about how, as your own institution, you may have been practically building in these considerations to your own IT strategy. Or if you've got ideas about how we could do that collectively and I will come back to particular questions in the Q&A, but let's just stay with this theme for a moment if there's anyone who's able to do that. If not, I will start. I know there was a couple of people who had some ideas. I think in the chat as well, which I think really interesting, linking to this. You see there is one of my willing participants, Stuart Lewis. Stuart, thank you for coming in. I know that the National Library of Scotland, so I, Frederica, meet Stuart for the National Library of Scotland. Wonderful talk we've had so far, say Stuart, and I know that you're involved at the NLS in very active thinking around judicial strategy and its relationship to environmental sustainability. Is there an area you want to pick up on and any kind of example that you can share with us? Yeah, I mean, thank you very much. It was a wonderful talk. I learned a lot and it really does make us think. It's a great subject at the time for us to be thinking about within this community. I suppose two things really came to mind for me. The first is actually, and I think this is going to be a big challenge for us within the library profession, is we love going for gold standards. We really like to minimise risk wherever we can. So purely from a digital collections point of view, we say, well actually holding one copy isn't enough, we're going to hold three copies. So we don't do that with our physical collections, but we do do it with our digital collections. We have much higher standards for our digital collections. When it comes to digitisation, you'll never hear a photographer saying, you know what, let's turn the resolution down a bit and we don't need that high resolution. But actually, I think we're going to have to ask ourselves some of those hard questions because the climate emergency is a hard problem. And so as libraries, as librarians, archivists, whatever, are we willing in a sense to play our part and just turn those down, increase the risk a little bit in response. And that is a hard thing for us. That was one thought. And then the other one I had was around actually to what extent we need to build infrastructure, which actually goes against a lot of what we've been saying to solve some of the problems. So for example, a lot of our digitised collections, they're very hard to find. A lot of our digitised collections contain duplicates where things have been digitised by multiple organisations. And so actually, is there any infrastructure to be governed in? People in work with me know probably the bit of work I'm talking about, but basically where we can get better at digitisation, sharing how we do things, who's doing what and things so that we can make those things that we do digitise more accessible and get more used by people, but equally reduce any risk of duplication of effort and therefore duplication of storage and the associated costs. Thank you so much, Stuart. I think it's a very interesting point. In a way, both points and both the idea that of course you want to provide high quality material and also to make sure that it's available and sometimes redundancy is a way to make it available. I want to say this is for example the way also the video streaming industry works. In a sense that in order for people across the globe to have access to the whatever song, they have to sort the song like in many different data centres in order for it to be available, to be available, high resolution and so on. So my point here is also it's that if on one hand it is important to, like if everyone takes this into account, it's also important to of course evaluate all the different situations. I came across a project that was very interesting, it was called the Digital Archive. The idea of this was a project of two artists and what they were trying to do was like to save all the artistic work that would otherwise be deleted from the internet and from the archives on internet because nobody really cared or nobody would find them profitable. What really made me think is that we should probably also like to get in this broader conversation what are the things that maybe are worth being redundant and are worth being saved. So maybe saving those digital projects, those artistic projects in digital format was a good thing because it was living like an heritage and keeping that heritage alive. While there are other things that may be reduced without, but again those other things that could be reduced maybe there are some other interests that will protect them. So in that sense opening up the discussion and as you say like thinking also about how can we achieve our goals in with more sustainable infrastructures and more sustainable technologies, it's something that as I said it's important to start in support and to love before it because when you will be asking this at your service providers they will have somehow to deal with this question even just at the business level and this creates like a domino effect in that sense. So I think it's about both. My intention is not to demonise all the kind of digital fantastic like work that is being done in all in different sectors, digitising products and projects and so on. It's really about as you say making people aware and then thinking about how this can be done and when it should be done and when not. So just really to start the discussion in a way that it's broader and not just done by the few. I would like to just let the two of you carry on talking and I'm very tempted to do so, but I just want to give others a chance if they want to join us. We have got a couple of extra slots free. There's no pressure to do so, but if you do want to raise your hand and just come and join and ask a question in person or make a comment then you can see it's a friendly group. So ignore the round people around the world just talk to us and we'd love to come in. I am really struck by the conversation the two of you have just had. Stuart will smile with me when we reflect on how long it's taken us as a sector to really take seriously models around sharing print, getting to genuinely collaborative approaches to sharing that physical material and often talking about the shift to digital as one of the opportunities that allowed us to do that. And the real risk of us not allowing this topic, this theme, this risk that has been so brilliant today as one of the drivers for a paradigm shift if you like in how shared access, shared ownership, shared infrastructure could be one of the ways in which we take responsibility in our own houses. One for all UK, I think. On the padlet, I can also see some people going in that direction, making similar comments. I think it's, I'm not very good at multitasking, but if anyone who wrote in the padlet that also with more critical views like to jump in, I think it would be interesting. That's great. And then we will be seeing a lot of interesting suggestions or insights in there. I think we're going to have a whole other session coming out of this one. But let me first introduce and say thank you to Guy Baxter for joining us. Absolutely lovely to be joining us on the screen. Guy, is there a comment or question you want to raise? Yeah, it was a comment really, but I thought it was a really interesting point, Federica, that you just made about archives, actually. I'm archivist at the University of Reading. Archivists are often thought of, archivists are often thought of as people who, so I'll bring that down in case it might get better volume. Archivists are often thought of as people who hold on to things. Archivists are people who get rid of things. That's what archivists do and what archivists have traditionally done. That's why when people are often shocked when they see the statistics about how many government records actually end up in the National Archives, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What you're talking about is a call for better records management in the electronic realm and more archival appraisal in many ways and actually making those decisions that people have been making with paper collections for a very, very long time. But the digital presents us with a big challenge and I suppose that one of those things is we don't have the tools and the instincts that allow us to make those selections. And it's just easier, isn't it? It's easier to say, well, let's just hang on to it all. We don't have to build a warehouse. And what you're saying is actually we are building a warehouse. We're building a warehouse that could be hugely damaging. We're building lots of warehouses. They're just full of servers, not full of paper records. So it feels like this is a call for more records management. I just wondered whether that's something that is coming through. Obviously, this is an RAUK forum, where this is coming through, particularly internationally, in archival forums as well. That's a fantastic point and I'm not sure I can answer the question about the archives. What I can say is that I think you really hit a very important point when you say that it is basically the same and it is true that in an archive you can see physically the papers and the amount of stuff. And then you say, OK, we need to manage this. The fact that you cannot see it in the digital realm doesn't mean that it's not there. And it can be accessed and it can be arranged and managed. So it's a shift in perspective. That's a main point. And I think it's a brilliant way of putting it, like comparing this part of the words of the archivist or data manager. I think it's a great point, Guy. I was really struck, like you and Federico were speaking, about the roles of curation, deletion, letting go. All of those things are being embedded in how we do our practice. I don't know either about what the connection is in terms of discussion with the wider archival community. But what strikes me is that there's a couple of people picking up on that area of interest in the chat. And maybe it's a challenge back to our UK in thinking about, you know, how we connect that with our partners in TNA, who I'm sure are having this conversation, the National Archives Federica. And I'm sure they will be. But also in our conference, we hold jointly across the communities, DCDC and annual conference, which brings together archives, cultural collectors, cultural sector, museums, libraries and others. I think this could be an area that I don't think we talked about there and it would be a really rich one to do so. I know we've got a couple of questions in the chat and I am not sure how technical you're going to want to get Federica. These might be just whether there are quick answers or one of them is, what is the role of quantum computing in this issue and has it a contribution to make? Yeah, I mean, in principle, yes, in practice, we are far away from that. So yes, quantum computing addresses exactly this issue of space and energy consumption, but how close we are to that. People have been talking to them, like, who are more of experts at mean this, are not very confident that this is going to happen. Yeah, that's really helpful. And the other one was, can you say a little bit more about how these practices might be built to digital infrastructure procurement? This is something that some of these government offices are looking into. So it's really about asking the infrastructure providers to deal with this issue and choose those infrastructures that are actually being sustainable. And this can be done in several ways, because depending on infrastructure, depending on the service, so it really depends on procurement for what. So if it is procurement for e-waste disposal, so it is about trying to understand how these companies will proceed to dispose electronic devices. If it is about procurement for IT services, so it is about trying to understand what is their sustainability plan, and in terms not only as a company, but also in terms of the data centres that they use, because there are different data centres using different technologies located in different places, and depending on this, they have different conceptions and emissions. So, as I said, it is broad, it is technical, and I probably will not be even able to go much further than this. And this is why I'm trying to study this issue more, because I think it is important to also provide people with tools. In terms of procurement, what is that I can do. But these are at least some initial questions that one can address and think about when engaging with providers.