What prototypes do we need for a sustainable future?

## The workshop: Technological tools have the potential to boost resource and energy efficiency as well as the circular economy and thus contribute to a CO2-neutral world. However, counteracting rebound and induction effects can cause the environmental impact of digitalisation and technological innovations to not decrease or even increase. In the spirit of systemic innovation, sufficiency approaches are needed already in the early-stage development process of new digital solutions to ensure that technology contributes to decarbonisation holistically and in the long term. In our workshop, we want to test the funding programme's sufficiency focus with you, sharpen the definition and selection criteria, and explore the potential leverage of technology in the sufficiency sector. We will work with you on the following questions: * In which areas of our lives should sufficiency be promoted? * What (open source) tools exist that already promote sufficiency? Where are the gaps? * What ideas do you have for technological applications that promote sufficiency or make the digital world more sufficiency-friendly? * Which (new and existing) solutions do we really need? Which ones do you want to promote? ## Digital sufficiency: This refers to strategies that aim to directly or indirectly reduce the absolute level of resource and energy demand from the production or use of digital devices. A study published [in 2022](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12243-022-00914-x) defines four dimensions of digital sufficiency: * Hardware sufficiency: durable, repairable and upgradable devices. * Software sufficiency: energy-efficient and data-saving software * Usage sufficiency: (not) using digital technologies in an energy- and resource-efficient way or using them to promote sufficiency practices. * Economic sufficiency: ICT-enabled improvements in labour productivity, circular economy. We use these dimensions as the basis of our workshop. ## The Prototype Fund Switzerland: The [Prototype Fund Switzerland](https://prototypefund.opendata.ch/) supports technically skilled, committed and creative people to create social value with open source projects. Independent programmers or teams receive up to CHF 100,000 to develop their ideas in the field of public interest technology from concept to first prototype over a period of six months. The aim is to create experimental spaces: In Switzerland, there is virtually no private or public funding for the initial development of tools that address societal problems - especially when sufficiency and degrowth are the focus instead of profits and returns. As the Prototype Fund, we support people-centred, interdisciplinary, open and collaborative work and pass on these values and methods to the participants in the programme so that they can incorporate them into their projects and communities.