Computing Our Way to Paradise?

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 toward 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 policymakers in environmental protection, sustainable development, sustainable consumption, and the social role of science and technology.

Foreword: Global Social Narcosis at the Speed of Light: How the Internet and Communications Technologies are gobbling resources, eradicating cultures, and destroying the planet, and what can be done to stop the runaway train
Chapter 1. ICTs and Globalization: Asking Important Questions
Chapter 2. The Poverty of Affluence: Sustainable Consumption and Global Environmental Change
Chapter 3. Virtual Morality: Globalization, ICTs, and Sustainable Consumption
Chapter 4. Lulled to Complacency: ICTs and Energy and Materials Consumption
Chapter 5. The Efficiency Paradox: Intensity and Consumption
Chapter 6. From Social Meanings to Global Conformity: ICTs and the Global Commons
Chapter 7. Pathological Tendencies: The Health Link
Chapter 8. Incantations and ICTs: A Global Ideological Pervasion
Chapter 9. Redefining Reality, Transforming Values
Chapter 10. Global Transformations: Serious Considerations and Promising Opportunities