I hear ecologically-aware people argue that the Green Revolution was a bad thing– it’s certain we’ll have hard times ahead unless we find some alternate tech post haste– but I’d argue that maybe the other billion people are also useful.

As far as energy consumption, I place my near-term bet on SSD, and mid-term bets on memristors. Long-term, we’ll need to be off petro. If you’re arguing that entropy in general, is bad, I agree, but we can’t change it– we can only channel the flow towards eventual heat death.

I don’t know how much of our e-waste is due to cheap-driven e-lust hardware turnover and how much is actual at-scale failure and replacement. That’d be interesting to see. If our only at-scale solution is to stop using computers, well, that’s a tough call.

Fortunately, you live in a heating climate 6 months of the year, so your computers at home are only wasting energy 6 months of the year. At a data center, well they are always cooling.

There are some interesting economics to think through:
- you use wasteful rails to produce something of value – that is a huge social benefit. People pay you money to make their lives better. Maybe you would never be profitable if you spend 45 times development cost to build your product in C . Or even started.
- you will always be looking for ways to be more profitable. If your product on rails is so profitable that computer cycles become a major expense for your solution, you are going to find a way to make it cheaper. By rewriting it, by moving to a data center with cheaper operating costs (because they have less cooling costs, or a cheaper energy source). If operating more hardware is the most profitable approach, it is the best approach for the environment and the economy. The good news is you just need to focus on profits to maximize social benefits.

As far as foreign workers being exposed to hazards, I think it is the role of their foreign governments and not pressure (or thinly-disguised trade barriers)from US or Canada to protect their workers. I have no doubt as China’s economy evolves and improves their environmental regulations, or enforcement of existing regulations will improve. China’s government will attempt to do the best for China. Though I would like to see them adopt a constitution protecting Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of (insert corollary of liberty here).

Going through an industrialization/pollution/cleanup cycle seems to be the way modern economies emerge. China is moving through these phases more rapidly than we did.

“And yes, this is deliberately provocative link-bait for my overly-zealous RoR-fanatic friends. Which doesn’t make it any less true.”

If I were to rewrite it, I would focus on the underlying argument, and then follow up with the seemingly boundless examples of wasteful computing. That being said, an obscure topic like this probably demands feet being held to the fire, and the act of calling out one amongst many will hopefully lead to further conversation. Can’t wait for followup articles.