Developing networks and institutions in support of sustainable development

Abstract

This brief paper draws the distinction between natural, societal and technical environments, and suggests that the societal environment helps to mediate the natural one, whereas the technical environment helps mediate both the societal and the natural environments. Social organisations viewed from positions of “survival”, of “subsistence”, of “security” and of “surplus” are discussed as they embody different approaches to the mediation process. The technical environment is reviewed as a purveyor of contemporary innovations within the general framework referred to as the Information Society. Such innovations serve to track and to mediate the benchmarks of industrial and post-industrial societies.