The Information Society and its Eco-dis/advantages

The concepts of sustainability and information society are different topics, approached through their own different vocabularies, development policies and priorities; their lack of interaction leads to a reinforcement of their isolation and stereotypes. The information society has the advantage of exploiting increasing efficiencies from the knowledge distribution and use, the economies’ dematerialization is not eo ipso eco-efficient or sustainable, but it has the tendency of generating unintended effects under the form of rebound effects. We are questioning a series of approaches regarding this issue, wanting to achieve a comprehensible goal rather than an analytical one. At the same time, we want to highlight the advantages of the Immaterialisation paradigm, “as a switch in consumption behavior from more material to less material”, as compared to the paradigm of Dematerialization; the first paradigm, that of Immaterialisation, probably has the deepest interdisciplinary roots.