Abstract:

This paper presents a conceptualization of telecommunications as a socio-technical system. We adopt a perspective that considers the multifactorial and interdisciplinary nature of telecommunications. Given the growth and penetration of telecommunications in the social fabric, we suggest that telecommunications constitute an open system where the interaction and interdependence of technological, sociocultural, legal and economic factors play a key role in the characterization of this system, hence a disciplinary approach is insufficient for a comprehensive analysis of the system. A perspective from complexity science can extract new findings towards the strengthening of the telecommunications ecosystem increasing the effectiveness and social impact of telecommunications as an important enabler of social well-being. We argue that this perspective is particularly useful in ICT and telecommunications engineering higher education curricula considering the importance of the emergence of new challenges that digitization and globalization impose in the new generations of knowledge workers.

Keywords:

Telecommunications, complexity science, engineering education.