ABSTRACT
This handbook has turned the key to open some of the doors that expose the relationship between politics and technology, and that help to understand some of the conditions of new technology development, of innovation, and of technology problem solving through policies in divergent governmental systems and involving different political interests. This is a fairly young area of the social and political sciences and requires research. It is clearly not an area that remains within the boundaries of individual disciplines, but requires mutual learning. It demonstrates that academia and its disciplines are permanently developing as they seek to understand new phenomena such as modern high-technology and its relationship to society, economy and ecology – and, that political science, as an interdisciplinary approach, can make its contribution while exchanging ideas and findings with neighbouring disciplines. As governments and political interventions pursue particular processes of economic and social development, new technologies become fundamentally important, and research on the relationship between politics and technology may help our understanding of whether there are opportunities productively to influence socio-economic developments that respect divergent interests and the condition of the ecosystem. Thus, the relationship between the political system and technologies is more than a mere matter of influence alone: it refers directly to the efficacy of proactive government policies – which are reflective social, cultural, geographic and political situations – when solving economic and social problems that can impact fundamentally on conditions of life and social welfare.
