Ask HN: Does the Usefulness of Computers Outweigh the Environmental Impact?
2 comments
I actually do not know how much environmental impact my desktop PC (and a 22" monitor) made. Worse than my 42" TV? Like a car panel or maybe a dozen cellphones?
I just don't know its costs. And I would need more details before answering the question.
I just don't know its costs. And I would need more details before answering the question.
Good point. I was hoping that somebody might be able to provide some information along those lines.
Googling "environmental impact of computers" turns up some data on quantity of resources and total energy cost, but such data is seldom presented in a useful context:
http://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=e...
Googling "environmental impact of computers" turns up some data on quantity of resources and total energy cost, but such data is seldom presented in a useful context:
http://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=e...
Depends on who's behind the keyboard.
Much has been made of the positive ethical impact of social networking lately particularly for stimulating social justice. Moreover, writers like Stewart Brand and Bruce Sterling have argued that in order for humanity to become resilient to environmental catastrophe, we must become massively connected. In the future we will "wrangle" massive realtime data sets and global-scale sensor networks will give us a fine-grained understanding of global physical, social, biological, even one day perhaps mental phenomena. McLuhan talks of the global village. Guattari talks of a planetary consciousness.
Surely you are interested in computers because you believe that they can do good. Do you believe that the good that you do with computers outweighs the environmental impact (and ethical injustice) that the production of the hardware entails?