“They don’t want change. They want power,” says Dag Hammarskjöld in the Swedish movie from last year.

Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until he died in 1961, and was dealing with the decolonisation of Africa, particularly the crisis in Congo when he said those words.

In 2022, 62 million tons of e-waste were disregarded globally. With a 2.6 million tonnes increase a year, it is projected that it could reach 82 million tons by 2030. At the same time, the recycling rate is expected to drop from 22.3% to 20%.

When I teach or give a talk on emerging technologies, I often find a huge gap in the understanding of the full production chain of hardware and software. It is as if the smartphone is just magically in our hands, solving all our problems and making the world a better place; the AI prompts magically make lives so much easier, speeding up our tasks, admin, and thought processes.