Published on
April 2026
Deep transitions and the evolution of the digital meta-regime
Digital technologies are increasingly framed as important tools to address grand challenges such as climate change. While there is an increasing body of research on the role of digitalisation in unfolding sustainability transitions, it has been recognised that there is a lack of longer-term historical analysis of the evolution of digitalisation in the transitions field.
This paper interrogates the multi-system evolution of digital technologies and the historical processes that have shaped the particular directionality characterising the information society. To do this, we mobilise and develop the Deep Transitions framework (DT). The DT framework has studied the mechanisms and processes that shaped the emergence and consolidation of mass production. However, the fifth surge of economic growth (identified as being initiated by the invention of the microprocessor and innovations in telecommunications), has yet to be analysed using the framework. We carry out a case study analysis developing a novel interpretation of digitalisation understood in terms of multi-system transitions processes and the consolidation of a meta-regime. In so doing, we contribute to a validation of DT theory and the analysis of multiple systems dynamics. We discuss our findings in the broader context of great surges of development and sustainability transitions literatures. We posit that the 5th surge is in its maturity phase, and that sustainability has had a limited role in shaping long-term path dependencies of digitalisation.
Highlights
- Provides a novel interpretation of the history of digitalisation since the 1930s to the present from a deep transitions perspective.
- Examines digitalisation in terms of multiple sociotechnical systems providing a new contribution to sustainability transitions.
- Contributes to Techno Economic Paradigms literatures concluding that the 5th surge is at its maturity phase, rather than a turning point.
- Highlights that the dominant direction of digitalisation has little to do with sustainability and exacerbates certain sustainability challenges.
- For sustainability, a change in the underlying rules of digitalisation is needed to contribute to unleashing a second deep transition.
By Phil Johnstone, Laur Kanger and Johan Schot
