UNESCO Chair in VS - SDG 17 - Seán Cubitt - Knowledge-sharing in a Digital Commons - SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Sep 21, 2026

A sustainability-focused knowledge-sharing session exploring what knowledge means for UNESCO’s goals and how it shapes the SDGs. It contrasts accumulated inherited wisdom, shared practice, and the risk of knowledge becoming locked inside machine “black boxes” for profit. The talk questions how living communities can overcome enclosure of common inheritance, build new alliances with earlier technological captivity, and form a future-worthy commons. It is delivered by Seán Cubitt of the University of Melbourne with event details provided for participation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages1

Reading Time3 min

AccessFree to download

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

What is knowledge for sustainability?

Seán Cubitt background and publications

Event details and access

UNESCO Chair inVulnerability Studies Department of English The Literature of Sustainability: Reading, Writing and the SDGs February 2025-December 2025 Knowledge-sharing in a Digital Commons SDG 17: PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS What is knowledge? Three aspects are important for UNESCO’s sustainability goals. First, knowledge is the accumulated wisdom we inherit from past generations in the form of language, mathematics, logic, tools and techniques. Second, knowledge is the shared practice of making new things with the legacies of the past, things we in turn can hand on to coming generations. Third, in our times all too often knowledge is locked into the black boxes of machines and forced to serve the goal of profit. It is said that the opposite of profit is debt, but just as private property deprives everyone else, there can be no profit without debt. The debtor promises that everything they will earn in future will go to paying for the present. As the instruments of present profit deprive the living of future advances, debt deprives work of a future – the potential for change. Intellectual property –that oxymoron – reduces the future to a vanishing point. How can living communities overcome the seizure of common inheritance and creativity for data capture, platform economics and profit-driven artificial intelligence? Can the living form new alliances with the ancestors trapped in technologies to create a new commons and a future worthy of the name? Seán Cubitt is Professor of Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne. His publications include The Cinema Effect, The Practice of Light, Finite Media, Anecdotal Evidence, and two volumes on aesthetic politics, Truth and Good. He writes onecocritical approaches to the history and philosophy of media and media arts. Date: 28 November 2025 Time: 6:00 PM [IST] Google Meet Link: [https://meet.google.com/ojm-twid-atg](https://meet.google.com/ojm-twid-atg) Pramod K Nayar | Anna Kurian Seán Cubitt University of Melbourne

FAQs

What three aspects of knowledge does UNESCO’s sustainability framework emphasize?

It emphasizes accumulated wisdom inherited through language and tools, shared practices for creating new things with past legacies, and the way modern technologies can lock knowledge into profit-driven systems.

Why does the talk connect debt, profit, and the loss of future potential?

It argues that profit systems rely on debt, which shifts future earnings to pay for the present and deprives work of a future—its potential for change.

What event details are provided for attending the session?

The document lists the date and time as 28 November 2025, 6:00 PM (IST), along with a Google Meet link for participation and organizers’ names.

Sep 21, 2026

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