Smart sustainable daily life: Insights from across the social sciences

Abstract

It is essential that a human-centered smart digital society is a sustainable society. As research is often conducted in disciplinary silos, there is a need for more holistic approaches. This paper is a step towards such advancements, reviewing multiple social science fields which study how ICTs have shaped daily life and why digitalisation has become so integral. Outlining such perspectives, we illustrate the different methods for understanding social aspects of digital daily life and how they can be applied to studying smart sustainable daily life. For example, through ethnography, time diaries and in-depth interviews. We highlight the importance of collecting detailed insights on digital use overtime; the sequences and patterns of activities in daily life; and rich contextual variables to account for the impact of broader social dynamics on human and computer interactions. Our review hopes to inform future research seeking to couple work on the integration of smart technologies and energy systems into society with more foundational social science approaches.