MSC 2021

Post-COVID-19 impacts on the electronics industry

The Mobile Social Congress (MSC) is celebrating its 6th edition this year. As every year, SETEM Catalunya supports this space of citizen encounter and reflection around the current model of production and consumption of information and communication technologies (ICT). A model that generates serious violations of human and environmental rights that remain invisible in the discussions at the Mobile World Congress.

COVID-19 has brought about an unprecedented change in the way we work, communicate and function as a society. This change has been reproduced in the electronics sector, which has seen remarkable changes at various levels: in the working conditions, in the functioning of its supply chains, in the consumption habits of ICT, in the concentration of power and influence by certain companies in the sector, in the growing use of the internet and in the unprecedented exposure of our private life and intimacy on social networks.

In the face of these changing trends, we believe it is essential to continue to raise awareness and highlight the various adverse social and environmental impacts that are intrinsic to the current model of ICT production, consumption and disposal, but at the same time, we believe it is essential to highlight the way in which the pandemic has generated transformations in the different aspects of the sector and how it has generated the need to move away from what we know as “business as usual”. We also see it as essential to continue to raise the profile of technological initiatives within the social and solidarity economy that provide solutions to the new social and environmental challenges we are facing.