While I appreciate the lightening of the load of websites to something more manageable and reducing overprovisioning, it should be stated that data centers are more efficient, in that they spend fewer watts for the same number of gigahertz, compared to at-point computer rooms or even personal computers. Clouds reduce energy consumption, not increase it.
The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#12> The analysis concluded that unless people took immediate action to counteract growth, global resources would be exhausted by the first few decades of the 21st century. In other words, civilization as of 1972 was projected to reach a total collapse by what is increasingly becoming our present day. I've read it quite a while ago, but I certainly remember that the first few decades of 21st century, and 2015 in particu…
What global resource is nearing exhaustion?
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#13> Fukuoka recognized that many of our celebrated technological advancements would be unnecessary had humans not created an ecological crisis in the first place.
Interesting. I'll have to give this some thought. I suspect there is some truth in this and some over-simplification as well.
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#14While I appreciate the lightening of the load of websites to something more manageable and reducing overprovisioning, it should be stated that data centers are more efficient, in that they spend fewer watts for the same number of gigahertz, compared to at-point computer rooms or even personal computers. Clouds reduce energy consumption, not increase it.
An increase in efficiency does not necessarily mean a reduction in total consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#15> The analysis concluded that unless people took immediate action to counteract growth, global resources would be exhausted by the first few decades of the 21st century. In other words, civilization as of 1972 was projected to reach a total collapse by what is increasingly becoming our present day. I've read it quite a while ago, but I certainly remember that the first few decades of 21st century, and 2015 in particu…
The nature of evolution dictates that, even without a collapse in our ability to harvest energy and other resources from the environment, life is destined to get worse for the median human being. There are only so many resources to be consumed, but life reproduces exponentially.
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#16> The analysis concluded that unless people took immediate action to counteract growth, global resources would be exhausted by the first few decades of the 21st century. In other words, civilization as of 1972 was projected to reach a total collapse by what is increasingly becoming our present day. I've read it quite a while ago, but I certainly remember that the first few decades of 21st century, and 2015 in particu…
What global resource is nearing exhaustion?
Attention.
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#17While I appreciate the lightening of the load of websites to something more manageable and reducing overprovisioning, it should be stated that data centers are more efficient, in that they spend fewer watts for the same number of gigahertz, compared to at-point computer rooms or even personal computers. Clouds reduce energy consumption, not increase it.
An increase in efficiency does not necessarily mean a reduction in total consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
I've always struggled with the application of Jevon's paradox to decision making. Does it mean we shouldn't try to make our usage of scarce resources more efficient?
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#18I fully expect that as the 'traditional' internet becomes increasingly monopolised, locked down and regionally fragmented, solutions similar to Othernet [0] will become more common. Personally I can't wait to be able to select between a multitude of networks all serving different content and services. [0] - https://othernet.is/
Maybe this is a bit tangential, but speaking of alternative networks, there are some really cool projects like cjdns and yggdrasil, which can be used to create an "alternative internet". A group I am involved with are trying to use it to create a local mesh network, since it's technically trivial to provide access to the greater internet over the mesh. And since you can manually peer with other nodes using the existing internet, you can participate in the network without being located near any existing nodes (though that may be considered defeating the purpose, it's very helpful to join all the meshes together so mesh services are accessible to everyone).
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
An increase in efficiency does not necessarily mean a reduction in total consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
I've always struggled with the application of Jevon's paradox to decision making. Does it mean we shouldn't try to make our usage of scarce resources more efficient?
I think it just means you have to do more than simply make things efficient. You also have to have some way to minimize total costs.
Re: The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement
#20> The analysis concluded that unless people took immediate action to counteract growth, global resources would be exhausted by the first few decades of the 21st century. In other words, civilization as of 1972 was projected to reach a total collapse by what is increasingly becoming our present day. I've read it quite a while ago, but I certainly remember that the first few decades of 21st century, and 2015 in particu…
The nature of evolution dictates that, even without a collapse in our ability to harvest energy and other resources from the environment, life is destined to get worse for the median human being. There are only so many resources to be consumed, but life reproduces exponentially.
> life reproduces exponentially
Life in general does. Humans, however, seem to be abandoning this trend.