Introduction

We live in a time and a world that is thoroughly shaped by digital technologies and the structural properties of digitality (Stalder, 2019). Our everyday lives are deeply connected to digitality, algorithmicity, and changing forms of social communities and communication. The term postdigitality points to the inevitability and loss of alternatives to digital structures (Cramer, 2014, 2016). The variety of technological possibilities, and especially the Internet, invite people to actively participate in society; indeed, democracy, co-determination, and active design were the hopes of the early Internet, hopes that were also discussed within media education as an academic discipline. The ideas of participation, discursive exchange, and co-creation rarely refer to the structures and characteristics of postdigitality. Today, both the digital environment and corresponding media education are strongly shaped by monopolistic providers in digital capitalist structures (Daum & Nuss, 2021; Niesyto, 2017a; Staab, 2020). The ways in which digital infrastructures are curated and built do not promote creative forms of participation but rather prevent them. This also has far-reaching implications for media education and the education sector in the context of digital capitalist infrastructures.

In other words, the current structures of digital capitalism represent the results of the decisions of only a handful of people—mostly white men—following the narrative of innovation for solving social challenges, while at the same time ignoring or not listening to the voices of people outside the decision-making institutions of the tech industry. This raises the question as to what a participative, co-created, and democratic digital infrastructure might look like. And what is the key to development in this direction? One might be education, as postulated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015a). The European Commission just recently published a framework for the main competencies toward more sustainable thinking, acting, and thus a sustainable development of our society: the so-called GreenComp-Competence Framework (Bianchi et al., 2022). This framework includes twelve main competencies, divided into four categories: “Embodying sustainability values,” “Embracing complexity in sustainability,” “Envisioning sustainable futures,” and “Acting for sustainability.” The category “Embracing complexity in sustainability” contains relevant aspects which, among others, provide the key elements for sustainable education and transformative learning processes central to Education for Sustainability (ESD) (Rieckmann, 2021): “system thinking,” “critical thinking,” and “problem framing” (Bianchi et al., 2022, p. 14f). To define oneself as an active and politically autonomous person—in both regional and international contexts—it is generally considered essential to follow a certain set of values and to understand systems, their dependencies and hegemonic power relations. This understanding must be established at a basic level and improved upon step by step over time, while recognizing that a full understanding of all complex relationships is impossible. According to this assumption, we can address the conditions and pedagogical principles of the teaching and learning settings needed to facilitate the necessary knowledge and competencies. Looking at existing media education programs and the digital infrastructure in which these are organized (Hug & Madritsch, 2021), we can see that students (as well as pre-service and in-service teachers) are rarely introduced to diverse technological structures (such as open-source material or regional, socially fair providers) but are rather exposed to the offers of the monopolistic companies mentioned above. Consequently, they are not encouraged to question the “made” character and feasibility of digital structures; nor do they generally have the opportunity to actively participate in the design of digital structures. Furthermore, they are hardly ever given access to knowledge about how the structures of digital capitalism are undermining democratic structures (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021; Staab, 2020).

Parallel to this, but not considered separately, research has examined and is examining the relationship between sustainable development, ESD, and digitality (Alessandro Barberi et al., 2020; Demmler & Schorb, 2021; Grünberger, 2021). In educational contexts, it seems to be a pedagogical principle of ESD and media education not to provide clear-cut answers but to enter into a mutual exploratory and co-creational process. The focus is on the joint exploration and critical consideration of the implications digital technologies have for sustainable development (Grünberger, 2022; Niesyto, 2017a; Rieckmann, 2021). The participatory exchange around these processes and relations allows the actors to understand the “made” character of digital technology and the general feasibility of postdigitality (as described below) and thus—at least to some extent—to perceive their roles in this complex development. But once again we can see that participatory and democratic approaches toward these issues in school contexts are rare. And once again we often hear and see an appeal to individual people to think and act more sustainably as the solution for a more sustainable development of our whole society. But how can we refer to the morality of individuals if they have no decision-making power at all and do not even have a realistic chance of understanding the system at least to some extent?

This chapter examines the notions of digitality, postdigitality, and sustainability, addressing the question of how structures of digital capitalism arise in the present day and how sustainable development can be conceived of within these structures. In the next step, I will discuss what the participation of learners in contexts combining ESD and media education might look like, and which opportunities and challenges are involved. This chapter is based on existing preliminary work (Grünberger, 2022; Grünberger et al., 2021) which will be extended to consider opening up general participation opportunities (both within and outside school) in the postdigital era. The text aims to clarify the complex relationship between participation, media education, sustainability, and digital capitalism. While research articles are, traditionally, supposed to give answers rather than raise questions, we see, especially in the context of rapid changes in the EdTech sector, that some questions “are still only beginning to be asked” (Macgilchrist, 2021, p. 244). This chapter must therefore be considered a failure from a traditional perspective because it does not provide clear answers but rather reflections along the way to formulating questions. These questions appear in all sections of the chapter, are highlighted in italics, and will be discussed in the conclusion.

Digital-Capitalist Structures and Sustainability

To understand the terms digitality and postdigitality, it is not enough to look at past discourses around digitization (Grünberger et al., 2020). The culture of postdigitality is no longer in transition. Or, more specifically, the ongoing digital transition has become its unique characteristic (Stalder, 2019). The logic, rhythm, and forms of presentation, of representation and repetition, of inclusion and exclusion, and of possible and impossible forms of communication are predefined by binarity, algorithms, the design of hard- and software architectures, and the network of digital infrastructure covering our planet from deep under the soil (by exploitation of natural resources such as rare earths, see, e.g., Gramlich, 2021) and deep in the oceans (deep-sea fiber optic cable or microplastic from e-waste, see, e.g., Taffel, 2016), to up in the atmosphere and stratosphere (Crawford, 2021; Stalder, 2019), such as the Starlink project by Elon Musk or the Loon project by Google X.

The search for a definition of digitality or postdigitality can begin with Jean-François Lyotard (Lyotard, 1982), who classified postmodernity not as an era after modernity, but as an exaggeration of it. Postdigitality could thus represent an exaggeration of digitality in which digital technologies form the basis of all social processes. And, according to Lyotard, postmodernity is characterized by contingencies and contradiction, to which one can respond, for example, with “paralogy”—or “subversion”—thus allowing new structures to emerge. This already points to the structures of a culture of digitality and digital capitalism following a certain logic and being characterized by certain peculiarities, which at the same time are generally changeable. Digital structures are invented, developed, and built as well as workable, malleable, and changeable by humans.

Secondly, it is important to point out the high importance of capitalist and digital-capitalist structures for an understanding of the digital and postdigital era, which again is fundamental—in both a limiting and enabling way—for all forms of democracy and participation, especially in the context of education. To understand these digital-capitalist structures, a close look at the logic of digital capitalism as well as the narrative of innovation through technology is needed. Digital technologies have been understood as one large solution and opportunity for democratic structures in the past as well as today. Wendy Chun’s book Discriminating Data begins on the first page with a devastating diagnosis of democratic conditions in digital structures:

The Internet has become a nightmare, the source—it is claimed—of almost everything bad in this world. It has given rise to worldwide surveillance networks, coproduced by states and corporations; social media algorithms, powered by military-grade psychological operations (PSYOPs) that spread lies and conspiracy theories, polarize society, provoke violence, prolong pandemics, and foster planet-wrecking levels of consumption; and artificial intelligence (AI) programs that exacerbate existing inequalities and threaten humanity’s future. The irony is that the Internet and artificial intelligence were promised to be and do the opposite. Cyberspace, the Internet of the late twentieth century, was to usher in a new era of global democracy, equality, and prosperity. (Chun, 2021, p. 1)

Digital technologies are “seen as a means of resolving the problems of society, yet never quite seem to deliver convincingly” (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 23). And again, digital technologies and their developers are postulating the rules of how our society works, what is becoming possible, and what remains impossible or simply not representable within digital infrastructure. The digital-capitalist market seems to be a market of its own (Niesyto, 2017b; Staab, 2020), also laying out the rules for the whole capitalist business world by building on venture capital and thus inextricably linked to issues of risk, inequality, poverty, and exploitation. As Srinivasan and Bloom put it, digital technologies are the “loom on which we spin the myths” of a functioning free market, of more democratic structures and freedom on the Internet—and finally of a rescue “from the disasters of our own making.” Digital technologies tend to discriminate against racial minorities, women, and the poor, thus perpetuating the colonializing tendencies that are generally attributed to media in the context of the writing of history and the associated codification of the nation-state in a culture shaped by books and writing (on the importance of media history in colonial history, see for example Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2005; Werkmeister et al., 2016).

In particular, applications based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) often build on data sets in which basic discriminatory structures of the past are already mapped and thus teach the AI this bias as correct (Crawford, 2021). In addition, Chun (2021) shows that AI—and thus an essential basis for decision-making in our society—is firmly built on questionable correlations of social characteristics (“eugenic correlations”), and that we thus operate in a certain way between homogeneous filter bubbles (“homophily”) and purposefully controlled controversial groups. However, it should not be ruled out that digital technologies can also contribute to a diverse and inclusive society. According to Melvin Kranzberg (1986), professor of the history of technology, “technology is neither good nor bad: nor is it neutral”: technology does not necessarily lead to chaos and inhumanity. Nor is it as “innovative” and “forward-focused” or “accorded with great social, even pseudo-religious, respect and pomp” as some may assume. And yet again and again, politicians and developers “hop[e] to escape a supposedly unredeemable society and unsavable planet” by means of digital technology (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 24f).

As already pointed out elsewhere, the relationship between digitality and sustainability is manifold and complex (e.g., Bieser & Hilty, 2018; Gramlich, 2021; Grünberger, 2021; Remy & Huang, 2014). Yet on its own, sustainability is a vague and frequently discussed issue. Sustainability refers to the requirement to manage resources and to meet one’s own needs in a way that potentially preserves our average quality of life for future generations (Harper, 2001b). The verb to “sustain” means to “suffer” and “bear” or “keep up” (Harper, 2001a). As sustainability is geared towards three equivalent aspects—social, economic, and ecological sustainability—all aim to “keep up” our social life or “not to damage it too much” (Harper, 2001b; Huckle, 2012) in consultation with our Planet Earth and other living creatures. Such efforts in the context of digitality and sustainability, especially with a focus on political programs, are based on overarching documents, such as the EU’s Green Deal (European Commission, 2019) with the associated Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2020a), as well as the Paris Climate Agreement (United Nations, 2015b) and the Basel Convention (Europäische Gemeinschaft, 1993) on the transfer of waste and e-waste. More specifically, there are the RoHs (restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, European Parliament, 2021) as well as the General Data Protection Regulation (European Parliament, 2016). Finally, many hopes are pinned on the Digital Services Act (European Commission, 2020b) and Digital Markets Act (European Parliament, 2022).Footnote 1 For Germany, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU, 2019; WBGU, 2018) and its reports are of great relevance.

The global perspective is taken into consideration, for example, by the United Nations’ (2015a) formulation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): SDG 9, for instance, aspires to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.” A sub-goal (9.c) aims to “significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020.” As an initial result for 2019, they postulated that “almost all people around the world now live within range of a mobile-cellular network signal, with 90 per cent living within range of a 3G-quality or higher network […]” (United Nations, 2019). However, this can be interpreted differently: The formulation of the SDG 9 may be (ab)used by ICT companies from countries of the Global North to create new jobs installing their infrastructure in the Global South without taking heterogeneous cultures, natural environments, or social structures into consideration. It becomes clear that bringing ICT to “least developed countries” is not a good thing per se, but has to follow participative processes and consider the specific conditions of these countries (e.g. Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2005).

What becomes apparent is the necessity to “cope with complexities and uncertainties in our globalised world” (Abdalahin & Chang, 2020, p. 17) and, accordingly, new forms of learning, engagement, and participation are emerging and evolving, which need to be developed and improved upon in interdisciplinary collaboration. Some of them are discussed and collated in ESD discourses. The European Commission is trying to tackle this issue by means of the GreenComp-Competence Framework, which “responds to the growing need for people to improve and develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to live, work and act in a sustainable manner.” The aim of GreenComp is to “support education and training programmes for lifelong learning,” to help all stakeholders in the field of “teaching sustainability,” and to enable learners to “become systemic and critical thinkers, as well as develop agency” (Bianchi et al., 2022, p. 5). However, reading GreenComp shows that many of the formulations are vague, leaving the back door open for neoliberal alienation or adoption for stakeholders’ own—less critical and sustainable—purposes.

As current discourses show, sustainability as well as a more sustainable development must be organized in close collaboration with social and environmental systems and with consideration for the “complexity of resulting interactions that make counterintuitive surprises the rule” (Kasemir et al., 2003, p. xvii). Otherwise, society will turn out to be once more in the status of “unsustainable sustainability,” as Ingolfur Blühdorn et al. (2020) diagnose the current situation. However, the developers of large IT companies, or the so-called “tech barons,” start from the “presumption that people and the planet itself are inconvenient, messy and in decline […] instead of doing everything we can to heal our planet and uplift our species.” The answer has been to design technologies which are supposed to solve these issues but in fact tend to “reinforce doubt and pessimism” (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 25).

Further, the development of digital technology by monopolistic IT companies tends to suffer from delusions of grandeur rather than being run for and with the participation of society in order to solve major societal challenges. The question therefore arises as to how the currently entrenched structures of digital technologies, which are shaped by a few IT monopolies, can now be shaped by and for the public. What steps (e.g. acquisition of skills, insight into and criticism of existing structures, technological equipment) and what infrastructures are necessary for this?

One example is Elon Musk, whose “literal and figurative moonshots” are described as an overriding heroic goal of technological innovation. These “moonshots,” as well as satellites such as Musk’s Starlink, visualize the expansion of digitality, developed and driven by humans, into all spheres; across the oceans, and from the Earth up into the atmosphere. Digitality thus spreads from the soil to the clouds and affects everything through its logic and structure (Parikka, 2015). Google took a similar approach by sending helium balloons into the stratosphere in its Loon project (https://x.company/projects/loon/#), which was supposed to guarantee Internet coverage in remote regions of the world (which is one primary goal of the SDGs, as mentioned above). The question is: Do we—as representatives of the Global North—want to have Internet access in every corner of the world and/or—much more importantly—was the decision made in agreement with the ethnic groups on site in a participatory process? The slogan of the developer group “X” behind the Loon project boasted: “We create radical new technologies to solve some of the world’s hardest problems.” But who defines what the “hardest” problems are, who has the right to think about and implement solutions, and what role do participatory processes play from a global perspective in the process toward a more sustainable culture of digitality?

We, the rest of society, are almost forced to go along with these structures and have little chance of developing alternatives. Let us take the example of 5G. 5G was developed as the next step in the logic of Internet protocols and, among other things, significantly promotes the further development and spread of virtual and augmented reality applications for smartphones. But nobody knows exactly what 5G can be used for. On the one hand, this technology is already swallowing incredible amounts of venture capital. On the other, the volumes of electronic waste, energy consumption, and server services that are necessary for 5G technology are rarely discussed. Again, it is technology that “society” did not explicitly ask for, not having actively participated in the decision-making process. And again, despite “connecting the unconnected” or connecting the “last billion, [...] it seems evident that the initial users of new space-based and 5G networks will be commercial and tightly aligned with support of other infrastructures and services of global capital” (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 32). These technologies are

not democratic or cooperative […], but controlled by a small capitalist elite. We can assume that for many there is something unnerving about having the globe encircled by thousands of satellites, balloons and drones. Perhaps this is because, from a spatial perspective, there is no way to know what infrastructure you are actually connecting to, where it is or what it is doing. (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 34)

In most cases, the digital infrastructures that are being developed and used do not generally have the superordinated goal of providing “better tech,” benefiting humanity, or solving the great challenges the world is facing. The idea of today’s IT monopolies is not primarily to save our planet. What we see is survivalism by a small tech-elite (Zuboff, 2019) that fails to take the rest of the world’s population into account. Furthermore, this whole concept is based on the funding of digital technology development. Thinking about new ways of digitality means considering questions such as: Who profits from technology and who is objectified, instrumentalized, or threatened by it? What are the peculiarities of current digital capitalist structures? What alternatives are there and how can they be established?

Politics and political decision-making processes can facilitate this development with regulations which strictly focus on creating value for people and the planet rather than for large oligarchic institutions. This calls for us to “close the distance—physically, socially and politically—between those that develop and roll out technology and those whose lives are subject to it” (Srinivasan & Bloom, 2021, p. 40). The further development of existing technological architectures and the development of new digital technologies can then be organized in a participatory negotiation process involving the world’s population (see for example Piétron, 2021).

The WBGU (2019) calls as a top priority for the installation and organization of so-called discourse arenas (German: Diskursarenen) to prevent digital technologies from becoming an accelerant (German: Brandbeschleuniger) for environmental damage, unsustainable working conditions, and the exploitation of the Global South by the Global North. However, this appears to be extremely difficult as the structures of digital capitalism seem to stand in the way of a participatory, enlightened approach to media education and active, courageous participation in a culture of digitality.

Participation for Sustainable Development in the Postdigital Era?

ESD in digitality or the postdigital era always has to do with participatory learning at all levels of education. The goal is to introduce an exchange about sustainability values, to practice a critical perspective, and to take responsibility through action. The thematic connection between digital structures, media education, and sustainability can be seen in different policies. In the EU’s DigComp concept, for example, a framework of skills for a digitalized world, which is often used as a basis for developing educational programs, contains the paragraph 4.4 “Protecting the environment. To be aware of the environmental impact of digital technologies and their use” (Carretero et al., 2017, p. 17). Another example is the German strategy by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) called “Education in the Digital World,” which claims to protect nature and the environment (“4.4. Natur und Umwelt schützen”) (Deutsche Kultusministerkonferenz, 2016).

If all these visions are to be realized, how should educational settings in this context be designed? Participatory working spaces involve high requirements from all participants but are necessary for a sustainable implementation and negotiation for a sustainable future development, and are officially implemented in Agenda 21. As participation is so important, it has become a “buzzword” in the discussion around sustainability but lacks a more differentiated use and application as well as a holistic understanding, focusing primarily on environmental sustainability (Disterheft et al., 2015, p. 11).

First, it is essential to define the term “participation.” Its etymological origins combine aspects of “being involved” and the act of “taking part.” The adjectival form “participational” means “involving or requiring participation” (Skeat, 1995). Consequently, we can detect two main aspects of participatory working areas, the first concerning structures, architectures, didactical materials, leading persons, and invited persons, for example, in order to allow participation. For this reason we can ask: How should structures from learning and working settings look in order to facilitate participation? Secondly, participative working spaces need people who want to participate, who have the aim, the ability, and the resources to get involved in participatory and co-creative working processes. By taking part in a participatory work setting, participants will automatically change the structures and architectures of the social relationship, the project goals, and the project outcomes as well, for instance. Consequently, an additional question can be raised: In what way or ways will the given structures and architectures of a project be changed by co-creative and collaborative processes?

It also seems crucial that the logic of participatory processes in the field of sustainable development is confronted with the logic of evaluation in an economical manner, focusing on efficiency, conservation of resources, and ensuring outcomes (Nikel & Heinrich, 2016, p. 261). Nikel and Heinrich (2016) analyzed a number of documents concerning Agenda 21 and the SDGs, as well as concepts and reports in the field of ESD, in which they examined the role of evaluating outcomes from educational programs and aims. However, this focus on evaluating and reviewing clearly identifiable competencies often ignores the specific type of learning ESD programs represent. Educational programs in the context of ESD can be distinguished into various types: on the one hand there is basic education (German: Grundbildung), which legitimatizes an evaluation, and on the other, educational programs focusing on much deeper learning processes involving critical thinking and emancipatory aspects (Nikel & Heinrich, 2016, p. 262f). The second type of educational programs render evaluation in the typical, highly scalable, and comparable mode inappropriate. In key United Nations documents, Nikel and Heinrich (2016) found, for example, notes explicitly revolving around aspects of efficiency, while at the same time addressing intense and critical learning processes. This is the result of a lack of financial resources on the part of the United Nations. The realization of the UN Sustainability Decade, for instance, is based on the financial support of the different nations and the documents examined therefore seek to address the moral concerns and individual engagement of all participants. Paradoxically, participants of ESD programs are already supposed to bring along a minimum of skills and knowledge about education for sustainable development. We often see educational programs which are not or only partly voluntary but have to be monitored and evaluated (Nikel & Heinrich, 2016, p. 266f). All this restricts ESD as it is supposed to focus on social negotiation in order to address the people’s responsibility. At the same time, educational online programs which try to pass on information and knowledge about sustainable development processes are still much too limited in their—mostly non-sustainable—design. All activities and all efforts in the context of sustainable development should thus primarily focus on the sustainability of the educational program itself (Nikel & Heinrich, 2016, p. 281). This is also relevant regarding the question of digital equipment in educational institutions, which often follow the paradigm of more and more technology instead of addressing a sufficient equipment strategy (see, for example, Selwyn, 2023). What digital equipment is necessary for such learning and working environments, and which digital equipment can be dispensed with, also in terms of sufficient use?

As the title of this chapter anticipates, participatory working spaces are typical of educational settings within the field of sustainability. According to Garmendia and Stagl (2010, p. 1712), the complex, contingent, uncertain, conflicting, and fast-changing field of sustainability in our society needs “methods, which open up dialogue and options before closing down and making suggestions” and therefore enable “[social] learning opportunities which are seen as ways for addressing complexity and uncertainty.” These social learning processes are essential in the initiation of transformational processes for a more sustainable development of our society. It would appear that this also requires some kind of subversive, transformational shift. After all, we have sufficient knowledge about climate change and postcolonial structures, but for decades have not changed our behavior accordingly (Blühdorn et al., 2020).

There is an ongoing discourse in society about how to handle this “need to be substantiated by democratic mechanisms which can deal with inherent problems of continuous change, uncertainty and multiple legitimate perspectives of the systems.” There is, therefore, a clear shift from focusing on outcomes to focusing on processes and from “pure expert judgement to using society as extended [sic] peer community” (Garmendia & Stagl, 2010, p. 1712). Research and researchers as individuals play diverse roles in this process. First, they are the ones who can open up discursive spaces with colleagues from various disciplines. Second, they can provide society with information about their research, which is one of their duties as part of the “third mission” of higher education institutions (Henke et al., 2016). Third, and for participatory processes most importantly, researchers can arrange participatory working spaces with various partners from society, provide them with information during the process, and support them with scientific knowledge. And fourth, we see that researchers increasingly take on an activist role or support activists with their skills and knowledge, giving rise to a discussion within the academy around the normativity and objectivity of research.

Discussing a possible future is a process in which all participants can learn from each other. For institutions this means putting a clear focus on the quality of participatory and decision-making processes (“procedural rationality”) rather than on the “search for optimal solutions (substantive rationality).” All this “requires the ability [from the participants] to cope with, adapt to and shape change without losing promising options for future development” (Garmendia & Stagl, 2010, p. 1712). Some would say that this eventually leads to the formulation of “future literacy” (OECD, 2019) or “futures literacies,” about which a critical discourse from an educational perspective is under way (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021; Hug, 2022). However, as described above, participants also need a strategy to deal with the fact that participation in postdigitality is not only hardly possible, but explicitly restricted and prevented, and that relevant and global decisions are made by a tech-elite with the necessary power, knowledge, and money. How can participatory processes be planned and carried out despite this knowledge of the limited scope for decision-making and action, without participants feeling that they are taking part in a farce doomed to failure right from the beginning?

According to John Dewey, democratic structures are endangered by systems of industrial society such as capitalism, which consequently leads to a “democratic crisis” and a loss of community. On the other hand, participatory discourse arenas, as described above, can facilitate concepts of democracy, keeping communities in an ongoing discourse and public institutions accountable (Disterheft et al., 2015, p. 12). And again: academics are the ones who can enable participation and democratic exchange by “abandoning technocratic and dominant positions” (Garmendia & Stagl, 2010, p. 1713). As Garmendia and Stagl (p. 1714) emphasize, this also goes along with Dewey’s view of nature as a socially constructed phenomenon. As Chun (2015) points out, our picture of nature and specific natural phenomena such as climate change is, on the one hand, a cultural construct which, on the other, is constructed by means of scientific technologies and in modern society by means of digital technologies. This leads to the fact that the participatory conversation and exchange about sustainability must consider the importance of digital technology and technological development. This must lead to a “new vision of our knowledge system as an open and diverse system” and a new aim of science as there are no clear predictions of consequences of one’s individual action in this “indeterminacy” of modern society in transition. In other words, we live in a time of bounded rationality, limited certainty, limited predictability, indeterminate causality, and evolutionary change (Garmendia & Stagl, 2010, p. 1714).

The concept of participation is directly associated with that of democracy, as politicians represent the public and/or the public can make their own decisions. In both kinds of democracies, participation is essential for the legitimization of governance processes. Public participation thus “refers to the practice of consulting and involving members of the public” in “agenda settings, decision- and policy making of organisations or institutions” (Disterheft et al., 2015, p. 12). Apart from democratic participation, we find individual as well as social participation. Individual decision-making as well as individual actions leading to a possible future world worth living in account for individual participation. Social participation, on the other hand, means collective activities on a regular basis in one’s community (ibid.). Based on this distinction, we can, at least to some extent, refer to social participation in the context of postdigitality. While we must be aware of the current limitations of this participation as described above, educational programs and efforts must nevertheless strive for encouragement and empowerment in order to develop solutions for more co-decision-making apart from existing structures. But how can educational programs be designed to encourage and promote the development of problem-solving strategies? And how do they fit in with existing education programs that promote a narrow understanding of competencies and their evaluation?

As Disterheft et al. (2015, p. 17) discovered in an empirical study, there are a few preliminary criteria for a more effective participation in participatory processes: communication, a transparent strategy, a clear goal, and “starting on time.” While this would seem to make sense, on the other hand this is precisely what is impossible in the context of media education, sustainability, and postdigitality: How can we define a clear goal for participatory settings in our time of constant contingency? How can we define a starting point for participative processes when we are always already too late? And how can we have a transparent strategy when we have only minimal insight into the digital capitalist market?

According to Disterheft et al. (ibid.), the facilitators of a participatory program as well as the participants themselves should have “specific dispositions, skills and participatory competencies.” These participatory competencies are described as “communication skills, […] intuition, personal strength and persistence, flexibility, and appreciation, […] authentic interest and credibility from all parties involved.” Further, these skills “need to be trained and developed, not only by the participants but as well by those who aim to lead through participatory processes.” However, all this should not distract from the fact that certain structural conditions are essential for success. The latter may include having enough time and availability, as provided, ideally, by the management or structures of an educational institution (Disterheft et al., 2015, p. 19).

Conclusion: More Questions Than Answers

This chapter took as its point of departure the assumption that participation could be the central key for ESD with a special focus on sustainability in postdigitality. But it has found that difficulties arise when the framework conditions formulated in education institutions are not, or are only partially, compatible with the conditions of a postdigital society. In times of high contingency, clear and unambiguous goals can only be set to a limited extent, and processes need to be constantly adapted. Finally, and most importantly, even academics have limited insight into the developments, structures, and logic of today’s tech giants. Considering all these challenges, the study of sustainable digital development in the context of education is further complicated by the fact that educational policy frameworks often require clear reporting, evaluation of clearly defined learning outcomes, and conservation of resources while maximizing these outcomes. In addition, there are limited or no approaches to opening up digital architectures in educational contexts beyond existing and well-known proprietary providers. In many situations, the focus of educational programs is still too much on the morality of the individual, who is assumed to be able to make their own actions more sustainable. However, as we have seen, acting more sustainably is not so easy, especially in the postdigital age.

While this chapter has hardly produced clear answers, its reflections have raised the following instructive points moving forward:

  1. 1.

    Creating opportunities for co-design and participation despite limited scope for action: Participatory development of digital infrastructures also means designing digital technologies for and with the participation of society. The question remains how to make the leap to this participatory approach despite all digital-capitalist adversities and resistance without its degenerating into a farce What steps, pedagogical approaches, and what infrastructures are necessary for this?

  2. 2.

    Futures, participation, and combating inequality and discrimination: It seems as if the sovereignty of interpretation over the present and the foreseeable future is in the hands of a few IT monopolies. The question is, how can we ensure that society sees itself as responsible for shaping the digital future and as actively participating in this development? Who has sovereignty over the development of visions and development for the future? Perhaps one of the hardest and most key questions here is how to end the long tradition of post- and neo-colonial inequality, which has also been fostered by the development stages of media. In addition, how can all this be made possible despite increased uncertainties and contingencies? How can we define a starting point for participative processes when we are always already too late? And how can we develop a transparent strategy when we have only minimal insight into the digital capitalist market?

  3. 3.

    Designing participatory learning and working environments for critical thinking and problem solving: How should learning and working environments look in order to facilitate participation? How can learning and working environments foster the ability and motivation of participants to take part? How can educational programs be designed to encourage and promote the development of problem-solving strategies? And how do they fit in with existing education programs? How will the given structures and architectures of learning and working environments be changed by co-creative and collaborative processes? What digital equipment is necessary for such learning and working environments, and which digital equipment can be dispensed with, also in terms of sufficient use?

It has become clear that the issue of sustainability is extremely relevant in a postdigital and capitalist era, that education should focus more on processes than on outcomes, and that in order to meet the current challenges, everyone—teachers as well as learners—needs knowledge, skills, and competences at all levels of education.