The environmental crisis and the role of new information technologies: beyond the domain of technique

Abstract

The domain of technique grows strongly since the beginning of Modern Age. Nowadays, we live with two derivations of that context: the new information technologies and the environmental crisis. The search of knowledge that allowed the explosion of information technologies is the same that revolutionized the industrial processes that have a great capacity of producing negative externalities. Simultaneously we live with the possibility of an ecological disaster and exists the viability of applying and controlling the progresses of science and technology to build a more sustainable world - environmental, social and economically -, because the new information technologies can play an important role in mitigating the environmental impacts of industrial production, stimulating more knowledge and developing of more appropriate technologies. The technology should not be just an object of negative criticism, but of a positive proposal, which it approaches criteria to do choices inside the technical world.