エネルギーからデータへ：文明の見えざるインフラ

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a conceptual framework linking energy and information systems, useful for interdisciplinary research on digitalisation and sustainability.

🏢実務担当者:Offers high-level insights into the systemic nature of energy and data infrastructure, but no direct operational guidance.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for integrated policies addressing both energy and digital infrastructure, relevant for long-term planning.

This interdisciplinary conceptual book chapter examines civilisation through the relationship between energy, information, technology and institutions. The study begins with the proposition that every civilisation depends upon its capacity to acquire, transform, distribute and control energy. Agricultural societies organised the annual flow of solar energy through photosynthesis, biological production, human labour and animal power. Industrial societies broke through many of these biological limits by exploiting concentrated fossil-energy reserves, greatly expanding production, transportation, urbanisation and military capacity. Digital societies have added a new layer to this historical development by using data, computation, communication networks and artificial intelligence to measure, coordinate and optimise flows of energy, matter and labour. The chapter critically evaluates the limitations of interpreting civilisation solely through energy. It argues that energy is a necessary but insufficient foundation of civilisational development. Energy becomes socially productive only when combined with scientific knowledge, measurement, technology, capital, institutional reliability, political organisation and cultural legitimacy. From scientific, economic and social perspectives, the study explores thermodynamic constraints, energy-conversion efficiency, net energy, the physical foundations of information processing, energy security, digital infrastructure, computational inequality and the concentration of power around electricity grids, semiconductor production, data centres and artificial-intelligence platforms. The chapter also examines the ecological consequences of fossil-industrial civilisation and the emerging interdependence between artificial intelligence and energy systems. It argues that contemporary society should not yet be regarded as a fully independent digital civilisation, but rather as a transitional civilisation in which digital control systems remain dependent upon industrial, material and largely fossil-based infrastructures. The central conclusion is that the future of civilisation cannot be secured merely by producing more energy or developing more powerful artificial intelligence. A sustainable civilisational transformation will require the simultaneous development of clean and reliable energy, intelligent resource management, resilient and equitable institutions, and a concept of prosperity compatible with ecological limits. The chapter ultimately proposes that energy constitutes the physical foundation of civilisation, information its nervous system, culture its memory, institutions its decision-making mechanism, and ethics the framework that determines how these capacities are used for humanity, future generations and the natural world.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21795012first seen 2026-08-23 04:40:57 · last seen 2026-08-24 04:49:42