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F o r e w o r d xvii
Foreword
he mere appearance of this book on the market is indication enough of how broad
and deep the sustainability movement has evolved. However, don’t be mistaken. IT
Thas been part of the movement all along.
The green movement could not have advanced this far and this fast without the
nimbleness of communication and information management that the IT community has
provided and facilitated. Of course, there are some who will critique IT with as much blame
for our energy and material demands and ecologic degradation as any other technology of
modern civilization.
We are for them a civilization apparently so hard-wired to maximize productivity and
entertainment in every context imaginable, that we have lost our moral compass despite
compromise to the Earth’s life support systems, much less the claims of the “zombification”
of children fueled by an electronic virtual reality.
Regardless, there is also no doubt that we benefit from the evolutionary speed of IT
in ways difficult to comprehend. For example, it is IT that has driven how fast we have
fortunately come to acknowledge, and increasingly understand, the precarious situation in
which we now find ourselves globally immersed—ecologically, socially, and economically.
As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any
more.” The double-edged sword is a cheap, but pertinent metaphor to understanding that
we are in relatively uncharted territory in the history of the human species, and IT is a tool
with which we can broker a deal for good or for evil on a scale never before imagined. We
will either follow the path of least resistance, peak out, and slide down the other side of the
Bell curve as the Easter Island, Roman, and British empires before us, or we will look back
to see this as an epiphany, with IT as a springboard to an awakening; an enlightenment that
will even bring a smile to the face of Mother Nature, and thus to the youth of generations to
follow. I obviously hope for the latter….
Little empirical evidence speaks to it directly, but Lester Brown describes it as our
“sleep-walking into history.” We have come to a point in which our collective conscious and
unconscious sense of well-being—our intimate sense of belonging to this place we call
Earth—is more in doubt than ever. The exponential trends of disharmony between humans
and nature are approaching threshold and tipping points that even the most scientifically
uninformed find hard to ignore, such as the melting of the Arctic ice cap, much less the social
tipping points for the poverty of the masses seeking access to basic standards of living.
Don’t get me wrong. While the issues might seem insurmountable, there is no lack of
solutions. There is only a lack of informed awareness, a lack of urgency, and most seriously,
a lack of political will and leadership.
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