So what does good look like? Or, to steal a phrase from my friend Alex Mecklenburg, what would be good enough?

It might look like collecting less data. Just what you need at any given time.

It might look like automating with care, and sometimes not at all.

It might look like zooming out from the task at hand, and understanding the wider social consequences of your decisions.

It might look like a policy of Sufficient Technology: just enough to make it work better for the people that count.

Which might also be the best thing for the planet.

It is likely that, outside of the military, a UK public body will never have the staff, resources and computing power to match those of big businesses. As Philip Alston and before him, in their fantastic books, Cathy O’Neil, Safiya Noble and Virginia Eubanks have shown, doing this badly is not good enough.

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Public services must change as the world changes, but they should develop their own path not simply follow the one created by business.

A public service internet must cut its cloth accordingly; rather than competing with global businesses, it should set its own, unimpeachable standards.

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Just enough Internet might be all the planet can afford in the future. It’s something that digital public services could champion and do differently, and perhaps in time technology businesses might catch up

From Harnessing AI for environmental justice -

[My approach is to] adopt a practice of just enough. Just enough technology, just enough energy consumption, just enough AI to do what we want to do, what we need to do, and no more. I'm just not sure that current forms of AI are suitable for that, so I would encourage resistance, care and critical thinking around any approach to AI.

(Marcus Berdaut, Creative Producer, The Upsetters)2