CHAPTER 4
Higher-order sustainability impacts of information
and communication technologies
Karel F. Mulder & Dirk-Jan Peet
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are considered to be clean technologies.
But underneath the surface of free flowing bits and bytes there are quite a number of issues which
accelerate or oppose sustainable development (SD).
“Normal” innovation is aimed at increasing efficiency of products and processes. However, the
ICT sector still has revolutionary characteristics: it creates new systems that provide new functions
and services that do not merely make existing systems more efficient. Such new systems co-evolve
with new types of behavior that might have both positive and negative sustainability effects.
These