‘There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.’ Ronald Regan The idea that compound economic growth can continue infinitely is at the heart of the political-economic ideology of capitalism. Without year-on year aggregate growth, capitalism effectively does not function. However, contemporary ecological crises, not just climate change, but also reductions of biodiversity, alterations to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle, oceanic acidification, and sea-level rise, suggest that the consequences of globalised capitalism’s pursuit of limitless growth are ecologically calamitous. Digital technologies are frequently posited as a way of transcending these limitations. Either through technological solutionism, whereby new technologies will render problems and limitations obsolete; decoupling ecological harm from economic growth; or enabling a circular economy, digital technologies are understood as providing a ‘smart’, ‘green’, ‘dematerialised’ alternative to the dirty technics of industrial capitalism, as exemplified by the claims that ‘data is the new oil’. This presentation draws upon the field of political ecology to outline the harmful, inequitable, and deeply unsustainable flows of energy, matter, knowledge and labour that are required for today’s globalised assemblages of digital capitalism, and how these flows are dependent upon ecologically unequal exchanges between nations situated in the global core and periphery. If digital technologies cannot enable a rapid and absolute decoupling of economic growth from ecological harm, serious questions must be raised surrounding the sustainability of growth based economic paradigms. This includes asking what sustainable growth in digital technology might look like and how education can contribute to sustainable digital futures, both through strategies of raising awareness and by developing sustainable digital infrastructures for educational institutions.

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