Computing Our Way to Paradise?: The Role of Internet and Communication Technologies in Sustainable Consumption and Globalization

Computing Our Way to Paradise?: The Role of Internet and Communication Technologies in Sustainable Consumption and Globalization

by Robert Rattle
ISBN-10:
0759109486
ISBN-13:
9780759109483
Pub. Date:
01/16/2010
Publisher:
AltaMira Press
ISBN-10:
0759109486
ISBN-13:
9780759109483
Pub. Date:
01/16/2010
Publisher:
AltaMira Press
Computing Our Way to Paradise?: The Role of Internet and Communication Technologies in Sustainable Consumption and Globalization

Computing Our Way to Paradise?: The Role of Internet and Communication Technologies in Sustainable Consumption and Globalization

by Robert Rattle
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Overview

Rattle's new book challenges key assumptions concerning the role of Internet and communication technologies (ICTs) in globalization processes. The author argues that while globalization is predicated upon a strong, extensive, and interconnected global ICT network of products, processes, and services, the real environmental and health benefits remain far from certain. ICTs have been promoted as the next economic wave with the potential to generate jobs, wealth, and prosperity to surpass that of the industrial era. It is assumed the environmental impacts will be negligible or even beneficial in this shift towards a service economy. Rattle investigates these current and expected trends in ICTs and their potential contribution to sustainable development. His book is an indispensable overview for researchers and instructors in globalization, Internet communication technologies, and environmental anthropology or sociology, as well as a resource for policy makers in environmental protection, sustainable development, sustainable consumption, and the social role of science and technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780759109483
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Publication date: 01/16/2010
Series: Globalization and the Environment
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 246
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert Rattle is an independent consultant working for NG's, business and governmental organizations. For the last two decades, Rattle has conducted research and provided consulting services in the areas of sustainable development and sustainable consumption; ecosystems and human health; ecological economics; impact assessment; information and telecommunications policy; Aboriginal well-being; and globalization.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Acknowledgments xiii

1 ICTs and Globalization: Asking Important Questions 1

2 The Poverty of Affluence: Sustainable Consumption and Global Environmental Change 15

3 Virtual Morality: Globalization, ICTs, and Sustainable Consumption 31

4 Lulled to Complacency: ICTs and Energy and Materials Consumption 51

5 The Efficiency Paradox: Intensity and Consumption 89

6 From Social Meanings to Global Conformity: ICTs and the Global Commons 101

7 Pathological Tendencies: The Health Link 129

8 Incantations and ICTs: A Global Ideological Pervasion 149

9 Redefining Reality, Transforming Values 183

10 Global Transformations: Serious Considerations and Promising Opportunities 195

Bibliography 201

Index 225

About the Author 231

What People are Saying About This

Josiah Heyman

Computers, cell phones, and other novel information and communication technologies surround us, and will certainly shape our future. Can they help us move toward environmental sustainability, or will they make our impact on the environment worse? Computing Our Way to Paradise? offers the most comprehensive reply to those questions now available. It covers all the key issues, and, more importantly, it explores the big picture, the ways in which such technologies form part of our worldview, our capitalist economy, and our resource- and energy-intensive way of life. Computing Our Way to Paradise? reveals that only by understanding and acting on these fundamental matters can we fulfill the environmentally positive potential of our information and communication technologies.

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