Operationalizing Sustainability

3Extension: From Complexity to the Code of Thought

3.1. The code of thought: effects of cognition and psyche in global sustainability

Innovation, when addressing the sustainability of a system, is a societal phenomenon, and not just a technological paradigm change. Indeed, our existence is like a drama: it is a complicated chaining of technical or human conflicts, by means of dialogue, information exchange and actions, to be performed by actors, or agents.

Today, a drama situation cannot be reduced to a technical problem. To understand such an assertion, it is useful to recall recent societal evolution facts:

• – during the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Centuries, populations were involved in the so-called “modernism” epoch. The evolution of our civilization was driven by three main factors: technological advances, labor, and rationalism;
• – a few decades ago, we entered post-modernity, a phase characterized by some switches: our civilization is more open to creativity (an alternative to labor), imagination, and cognition, in lieu of conventional technical progress. Then rationality and wisdom are giving ground to “fun” and “laughter”.

As a consequence, we observe that the current postmodern era leads us to use sophisticated technologies focused on the human being. For instance, a person needs to divert a usual matter of interest, towards doing something else and satisfy new needs, which would be different from those covered by him/herself. The person needs to transcend the present situation, ...