Managing (un)sustainable transitions – bringing the broadband society on the right track?

Information and communication technology (ICT) can be seen as a general purpose technology with wide-ranging socio-economic and environmental implications across sectors. ICTs also constitute a system of technologies where the internal links have been strengthened through the emergence of the internet and the broadband as a new information infrastructure. The present changes can be studied as a system-level transition process, often referred to as the emergence of the broadband society, and the paper deals with this transition from an environmental perspective. By bringing together three different and usually separate literatures – transition theory, economic studies on ICT and environmental studies on ICT – the paper explores the energy impacts of the transition, how the broadband society is taking form, and why environmental concerns do not figure more prominently. In conclusion, it is argued that these processes illustrate the need for transition theory to focus more on how to cope with emerging unsustainability.