Environmental Engineering Reference
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environmentalists for decentralization parallels the ideas of Informa-
tion Society scholars such as Daniel Bell, without any noticeable direct
influence between the two.
Third, the Information Society thesis overlaps with the environmen-
tal agenda of the 1970s in emphasizing deindustrialisation. Where the
Information Society literature investigates, hypothesizes and advocates
the switch form the industrial sector to the service sectors, environ-
mentalists in the 1970s joined them in calling for a deindustrialisa-
tion of modern society, as the industrial sector stands for massive
emissions and abundant and inefficient (mis)use of natural resources.
This parallel is most strongly felt in Boris Frankel's ( 1987 ) analy-
sis of what he labels the Postindustrial Utopians, drawing parallels
between Information Society theorists such as Toffler and Bell and envi-
ronmental scholars such as Rudolf Bahro and André Gorz. The dein-
dustrialisation agendas of both groups of authors show remarkable
commonalties.
Finally, the dematerialization ideas of the environmental movement
and scholars often find some rationale in the hypothesis of the coming
of the Information Society, especially as in both notions the material
basis of production and consumption and of economic development
is increasingly replaced by nonmaterial forms of production and con-
sumption. Again, the growth of the service sectors are part of this, but
also the fine-tuning of industrial production processes with the help
of ICT, the decrease in travelling as a result of improved communica-
tion systems and ideas on the switch from material products (newspa-
pers, magazines, books) to digital alternatives. Even virtual tourism is
stressed in both traditions.
Still, in all, it remains rather remarkable how absent environmental
arguments and perspectives have been in the debates on the Informa-
tion Society in the 1970s and 1980s. There is, for instance, hardly
any reference to the possibilities of environmental movements to use
ICT in their campaigns; there is no emphasis on improved environ-
mental monitoring and information collection possibilities following
the Information Society and there is no attention paid to the environ-
mental improvements of an information-based economy. Clearly, both
schools of thought come from very different traditions, hardly shar-
ing common intellectual and societal backgrounds and advocates. It
was only in the 1980s, when environmental scholars and advocates
started to develop a less hostile attitude to technological innovations,
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