Blog L

Do you use your computer much? Do you leave it running all the time, just in case there's an email to read? Do you Skype? The world's computing devices use 125 terrawatt hours of electricity annually, and that's about the same as burning 350 million tons of coal. And while there are a lot of people developing energy saving software and techniques for computing, there is a bigger group of people developing power hungry applications to give us all a bigger experience. Which do you need? Can we circumvent the compound fracturing of our future world by lightening up a little? My partner earns her living on a computer; and I can go a whole day without being able to access an interesting looking email, but I can get this blog away while she showers. I have minimal use, in fact, for this machine, and she searches the net better than I, and saves a multitude of energy wasting by being a good online researcher. But I sense in everyone who has access to the current computing world, an abnormal need for detail and unnecessary facts/tidbits/gossip, let alone the burgeoning need to share with everyone that set of crazy photos someone sent you. This is trivial use of a vast resource; I don't have the facts about the post offices of the world; we certainly aren't economising on paper, a claim I've heard since I started using IBMs in the 60s.... but we are getting obsessive, and I would like everyone to think about that each day as they make their decisions what to do at each computing moment. Of course you may be the type who just has to have everything at your fingertips... well, you too, lighten up. All the achievers I've ever hung out with have NOT used computers in any major way. (John Britten, the motorcycle designer, was one of the few I've seen embrace the computer as a great tool, and pay no mind to its smallminded capabilities.) Michael Jackson probably never had a computer, or the time to use one, but he did teach us all how to dance; now there are more websites devoted to pulling him down, turning him over, spitting him out, and, yes, they could lighten up too; stop wasting precious time please. If you think I'm too busy knocking people, I'd like you to know I have literally hundreds of good ideas every day; I find a paucity of people to share them with; John Britten was the last guy I really brainstormed with; now with internet I have to subscribe-to-contribute, and I much prefer 'zero-knowledge-proofs' to get connected with people; regrettably people want more than my input; they want my demographics, and I don't have any demographics I need to share with anyone. Now there are plans to make the cellphone a social networking tool; which will come first; the misuse of the system to commit a physical offence with a participant, or an actual theft of an identity to achieve god-knows-what? And do we need Netvibes and other egocentric media that badly? If we all put limits on our acceptance of enormous files, the egos might be forced to lighten up too? Nuff said.