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1. Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jan-2022 10:00:29 UTC Adrian Cochrane

   in reply to

   Don't get me wrong, computers can absolutely help us regain our environmental efficiency. They just *aren't*.

   Not as long as we're:
   * constantly syncing everything to the cloud,
   * expecting same-hour delivery,
   * funding our clickbait via surveillance advertising,
   * buying a new phone every year,
   * using AIs because they're cool rather than useful,
   * running bloated software & webpages,
   * buying into "big data"
   * etc

   Computing is environmentally cheap, but it rapidly adds up!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jan-2022 10:00:30 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     I finished reading World Wide Waste by Gerry McGovern. I'd consider it essential reading for anyone working with computers!

     https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/

     It's well cited (though I still need to check those citations) & uses maths effectively to make it's point.

     That computers + (surveillance) capitalism is actually worse for the environment than the predigital era. That we can and must move slow and fix things, and fund that vital work directly.

     Tagomago and jartigag repeated this.