Facebook seemed so frivolous when it first emerged 15 years ago, but look at it now: this glorified chatroom has completely upended the very sector it seemed destined to complement, becoming in the process the epitome of a “disruptive technology”. Lyft and Uber have since done the same to the sector formerly known as “taxis”, while Venmo is doing it to payments and money transfers.
As we pondered the impacts of technology from discussions at the recent Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco – Silicon Valley’s corporate tech-hub sister city, held on 12-14 September 2018 – we couldn’t help but notice that something similar is happening in the environmental arena as well.