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

by Robert Rattle

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.

Editorial Reviews

This book amplifies the growing fissures emerging in our collective understanding of ICTs and how they can benefit sustainable consumption….This book is a timely and useful contribution to the debate on how we are to deal with unfolding social, economic, political and environmental chaos. It adds clarity to the unsustainable trends in consumer driven lifestyles, how ICTs drive them and how their extra-ordinary potential for a better future has yet to be fully harnessed.

The Learning Edge

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.

Josiah Heyman

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.

August 2010 Choice Reviews

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.

Choice

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.--Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, University of Texas at El Paso

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.--CHOICE, August 2010

This book amplifies the growing fissures emerging in our collective understanding of ICTs and how they can benefit sustainable consumption....This book is a timely and useful contribution to the debate on how we are to deal with unfolding social, economic, political and environmental chaos. It adds clarity to the unsustainable trends in consumer driven lifestyles, how ICTs drive them and how their extra-ordinary potential for a better future has yet to be fully harnessed.--The Learning Edge, Fall 2010

From the Publisher

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.

August 2010 CHOICE

This book amplifies the growing fissures emerging in our collective understanding of ICTs and how they can benefit sustainable consumption….This book is a timely and useful contribution to the debate on how we are to deal with unfolding social, economic, political and environmental chaos. It adds clarity to the unsustainable trends in consumer driven lifestyles, how ICTs drive them and how their extra-ordinary potential for a better future has yet to be fully harnessed.

Fall 2010 The Learning Edge

A timely, engaging read.... Highly recommended.

August 2010 Choice