The technology of need: technology of sustainability?

Abstract

Hyper competitiveness accelerates the pace of innovation and generates an impressive increase in the number of products that are introduced in the market daily (Harvey and Griffith 2007). Nevertheless, most of these products are not designed to satisfy basic needs and their distribution among the population is uneven, increasing social exclusion. The technological systems (Hughes 1987) in which innovations take place have, in many cases, evident features of unsustainability. This is because there is an increased use of raw materials and energy to manufacture consumer goods (tangible or intangible) especially those oriented to satisfy the consumption aspirations of a little fraction of humankind. This is supported by an important rise in the capabilities of knowledge production, posing a paradox: on the one side, more efficient technologies are developed allowing the increase of industry and services efficiency which can result in a reduction of the environmental impact. On the other side, it increases the possibility of nature appropriation and transformation, mainly by the intensive exploitation of resources, both traditional (e.g. iron, bauxite, copper, coal, petroleum, limestone, etc.) and new ones (e.g. rare earth, coltan, Lithium salts), and the growing generation of new waste polluting. Therefore, outputs are often unsustainable. This leads to questioning the current sociotechnical structure and the need of exploring alternatives that, inevitably, must induce a rethinking of the notions of technology, production, and consumption. During the sixties and seventies of the past century, there was a debate about development models and the technological systems supporting them. Several studies warned against the negative impacts of technological development and industrial growth, urging for their reorientation (Carson 1962; Meadows et al. 1972; Dickson 1980; Schumacher 1978). Nevertheless, an economic-productive model, based on continuous growth, in