The web is not free. It is not really that free economically and it is most
certainly not free ecologically and its hidden social cost is enormous. If
anything the web is perhaps the most costliest invention of the industrial
revolution.
Let us consider the the environmental cost. Google lets you search billions
of pages for 'free'. Your search request goes to thousands of machines that
are running twenty four hours a day and they require lots of power. Take one
day to observe yourself: how many web hits did you make, how many times did
you check your email? Each one of these activities requires power and fuel
to generate that power. Now imagine billions of people around the world doing
the same thing.
This link added by CHS:
'Carbon cost' of Google revealed (BBC News)
US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2.
However, these figures were disputed by Google, who say a typical search produced only 0.2g of carbon dioxide.
A recent study by American research firm Gartner suggested that IT now causes two percent of global emissions.
Dr Wissner-Gross's study claims that two Google searches on a desktop computer produces 14g of CO2, which is the roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle.
The Harvard academic argues that these carbon emissions stem from the electricity used by the computer terminal and by the power consumed by the large data centres operated by Google around the world.
Speaking to the BBC, he said a combination of clients, networks, servers and people's
home computers all added up to a lot of energy usage. End of BBC excerpt.
The technology business also generates tons of toxic waste. The turnover for
hardware is huge, a business is always updating its hardware all the time and
the need for resources is exponential in its growth. Besides, without the
tools and consequent costs of the industrial revolution the web would not be
possible in the first place.
If you want to measure carbon footprints, please, measure the footprint of
your using the web.
Now look at the economic cost. Google search is free now, but it is free like
television is free. By advertising, creating need for things you don't really
need. Oftwominds has had a number of pieces on the advertising machine that
manufactures needs. With the credit bubble bursting the average purchasing
power is going to be less. In the short run Google may even benefit from
this as more and more people go to Google as a cheap way to sell their stuff.
But if more and more people go broke, this advertising will dry up. It's
worth remembering, you can't be rich if everyone is poor and makes nothing,
because no matter how great your knowledge, if nobody can afford to buy what
you make then you will be broke, too.
And the social cost? Well, putting aside the obvious, like surfing addiction,
information overload, social withdrawal, porn addiction, the far bigger cost
is this: the web gives us the illusion of unlimited *ever improving* choice,
which if we buy into it, can only destroy us. Nothing has the potential to
ruin a person's life quite like living with this illusion. Even poverty is
better. People can still find love, community and fulfillment while being
poor.
This is not about having the option of fifty different types of
cereals, it's about believing that there is unlimited choice for the important
things in life, namely work and family. This illusion allows us to flake out
when things get a little demanding or troublesome, there is always something
else out there.
Consider online dating which is so popular these days. How
easy is it to just flake on the match du jour, break off communication midway
because it's too much trouble, you are not really hundred percent sure and
there is always some other match right around the corner? After all, don't we
get the daily list of matches of new all seemingly exciting people? We can
put it off because it's easy to do so and we are not worried because we think
there are always other options.
But the human psyche does not work like that. Psychologists will suggest
that most people are capable of genuinely caring for at most two or three
people in their lifetime, with the usual degrees and exceptions, and this is
most likely in their twenties and early thirties. This is when our habits are
being formed. At thirty-five the body reaches its peak; after that it's a
slow process of decay.
And it takes years to establish any solid
relationship. All that romance that at least some of our grandparents and
even our parents seemed to have, that everyone talks about but seems so
elusive today, it required perseverance, commitment and being true to your
word, it didn't just happen. It also helped them that they didn't believe
that had that many choices...
The same is true for career. If we jump around from one thing to the next we
cannot develop anything in depth. Ditto friendships. Contrary to what the
myspace profile might suggest, we can't really have a thousand friends.
Again, psychologists will suggest most people can have at most a dozen or so
close people in their life; the psyche cannot handle more than that.
The
closeness does not develop with an easy come easy go attitude. It is the
shared history that creates the bond and the kind of friendships we can make
at twenty are very different from those we can at forty. The reality is that
to build any kind of a solid career or relationship we don't really have that
much time nor do we have that much choice.
(
The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough Atlantic Monthly)
Three things have historically restrained human beings. The first two are
scarcity and incompetence. The third is an acknowledgement of our mortality
and a higher function in life. Why is it that so many Buddhist and new age
healing centers have sprung up in America? People are hungry, perhaps they
have spent too much time living with these illusions, too much time working in
cubicles starting at a fluorescent screen while living in splendid isolation
with no community and ritual, all the while justifying the isolation by saying
they are searching for true this or that.
It is not technology that is to 'blame' per se. Human know-how is neutral.
But even though we may know how to make things better, the human psyche is
still the same; we still will go through the same pedagogical cycle. We still
make the same transitions, from adolescence to adulthood, from dependency to
responsibility, from caring about ourselves to caring about someone else, from
maturity to inevitable decline and death.
The mythology of any given time has
to prepare us to to live our life cycle while incorporating the tools
available; to help us make these transitions during the window of opportunity
when we can, while going through the training necessary to successfully make
them.
So what are the myths we live by? This seems to be the state of the technology
enabled modern mind and it seems a kind of cosmic joke. We believe we have
unlimited choice while throwing away cultural values which would have helped
us actually make choices.
We postpone the important transitions of life
because we believe we can always do them later, and we must be free to do them
only when we choose to, as if time will stop for us. We insist that the
perfect love, perfect career and perfect everything are out there and fully
believe that not only can lightning strike us, but it will strike us, we are
entitled to it and it is necessary to hold out for it.
We insist we must feel
passion for whatever we do, but reserve the right to flake out whenever things
get involved, which is when we actually feel some passion. What is this but,
as the thirties and forties roll in, a recipe for introversion, lots of time
on the therapist's couch and that prescription for valium and prozac? All
this at a time when we are entering a world of far greater scarcity.
The piece on the death of the expert brought suggestions of elitism. But
consider the pilot of the US Airways plane who brought the plane down safely
in the Hudson. Captain Sullenberger is being described as the last of the
American Gentleman; as someone who who took his responsibility of being
captain seriously, who was ready to leave his sinking ship only when the last
passenger had been taken off, a man of impeccable manners.
Who thinks these
kinds of values just happen? Of course they don't and of course they are
elitist: they can only be learned over years of training, commitment,
sacrifice and hard work. And Captain Sullenberger is the elite of the elite,
the best of the best. Why is he the last of the American gentlemen? Because
we no longer care about these values. But ask yourself, the next time you are
on a plane would you rather it be commanded by someone who has these values or
someone who doesn't?
