But the computer industry strikes me as different in some ways from conventional industry: 1) it changes faster 2) there is much fundamental scientific and engineering work left to do to reduce the wattage of chips, and progress is well under way. 3) the ubiquitous change to mobile tech is driving the consumer end right now. If we were talking about the car biz, it would be the equivalent of having 50% light electric cars on the road. Plus, computing makes other processes more efficient, and so an increase in computing might actually save total energy elsewhere.

On networking and cloud computing, I have to say you are making assumptions that don’t follow. Sure it takes some computing power per packet on a network, and more packets means more power used. But packets aren’t physical objects, and don’t have irreducible physical properties like the laws of thermodynamics. The quantum rules followed are much less understood and the resultant engineering is far from optimized. I think routers and switches actually move more packets for a lot less input than they used to, though I haven’t any reference to prove it (I work for a switch company). Cloud computing is more efficient on almost every level so its here to stay.

cheers

John Fisher

“Worth more conversation. Here’s some thoughts.

Reusable device:
What components of a tech products do you think can have service life extended if they were swappable? This is a real challenge IMO when you start to look at the bill of materials and parts. The problem is that most of the underlying technology is on a Moore’s law improvement curve. Processor, motherboard, RAM, battery, video card, storage, battery… these things just aren’t worth reusing or replacing in whole or part because the total system becomes outdated by increases in performances and advancing specifications and features of *software*. These physical components aren’t really wearing out. The video screen may be worth keeping but even those are advancing in performance and may include energy improvements that make switching to new screens better for the environment (crt to lcd as an example).

It seems to me one of the only way to increase service life is to slow down the advancing performance requirements of software. I have no idea how to do that – I’m just thinking about the system dynamics of your topic. I would pleased to be using most versions of my hardware and software from 1998 with just a larger hard drive, faster processor, and faster broadband connection. I would pleased to lock in a device, form factor, ergonomics and set-up that is tuned to me and have all the applications just perform better each year.

Perhaps cloud computing will help with these issues by offloading OS and application processing to the cloud and allowing consumer devices to have longer service life. That of course is not the trend we are currently seeing with laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Energy units vs QOL units

Something I ponder is the environmental cost of personal computing and the value it provides vs the replacement cost of that value / quality of life (QOL) by another mode. I’m quite bullish about tech in this regard. Once a video game, application, or media file is created its energy unit cost to deliver is quite small (relative to physical goods). The joy produced and QOL provided by that small unit cost can in many cases be quite large. As a gross example: it seems to me that teens these days are much more interested in the status and style and freedoms provided by smart phones than teens in 1950’s to 1980s. In my younger days it was all about CARS. Obviously the environmental impact and energy cost of adding a car to the system is far greater than adding another smart phone. Yet I get a sense that most young people get similar joy, social connectedness and QOL from ICT as we did from cars. More tangible examples including ebooks and video conferencing clearly win over the physical alternatives even with ICT embedded costs. All this to suggest that if energy becomes really expensive we may see an even greater shift to ICT because it is more energy efficient than almost all physical alternatives.

The potential of creating high QOL experiences for the maximum number of people at reduced energy per person (relative to other products and services) is hopeful. Of course with reduced unit cost the experience becomes more affordable and thus consumable by a larger audience. So given expanding population, and a growing addressable market the net effect is more energy consumption by ICT. Ahh the frustrating beauty of systems.”