Sometimes the smartest technology path may be the one not taken. A low-tech, no-tech approach that cuts costs, saves energy and frees precious resources for truly high-payoff technology initiatives?
Internet vs. Sneakernet: The No-Tech, Low-Tech Option
Question:
What’s the fastest way to send 500 gigabytes 15 miles across a crowded urban
area:
a) carrier
pigeon
b)
sneakernet (physically carrying the disc)
c) commercial parcel carrier
d) Internet
with fiber or DSL connection
Duh, you
say. Obviously, D.
Not so fast.
Low-tech Magazine (motto: Doubts about technology)
makes a pretty
interesting case that in varying circumstances, the real correct answer is anything but D. Consider the case for
Sneakernet:
Fibre
transfers 500 gigabytes in just 24 hours (12 hours of uploading, 12 hours of
downloading). Since our hiker only walks ten hours a day, he is only faster
than the fibre connection if the distance is less than 25 kilometres or 15.5
miles (50 kilometres or 30 miles divided by 2).
If
our hiker boards a plane and flies with a speed of 1,000 kilometres an hour
(620 miles per hour) to his destination, then he is faster than the fibre
connection as long as the distance is less than 10,000 kilometres or 6,200
miles. (He loses 4 hours waiting in the airport.) This means that, finally, the
Internet connection scores better than any other means of transport but only
when the data has to be sent to the other side of the world.
Their surprising conclusions:
If you fill up a freight train, a cargo ship or a large plane
with hard disks, then of course even the fastest Internet connection crumbles
to nothing compared to the sneakernet, whatever the distance. … Never
underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the
highway.
I won’t spoil your fun
and give away the other computations. OK, I will tell you that the authors
conclude that sending 2 gigabytes of information for 125 miles is faster via carrier
pigeon (as in the old super-geek
gag) bearing a microSD card than by a fast broadband connection. You’ll
find their ciphering here.
Trained pigeon
availability notwithstanding, this little bit of math showboating raises a
really interesting, very important question:
Could one important but neglected path to smarter
technology be the road not taken? A low-tech, no-tech approach that cuts costs,
saves energy and frees precious resources for truly high-payoff technology
initiatives?
To a Boy with a Hammer, The World’s a
Nail
We’ve all
been conditioned, especially in or around IT, to reflexively grab a technology
solution for every problem. It’s what we do. In many cases this makes sense:
Since the days of stone-scraping
hominids, smart use of technology has propelled progress. But at a time
when the developed and developing worlds are struggling with new, painful
realities of diminished resources, it seems like a pretty good time to wonder
if, in some cases anyway, technologically low isn’t a good way to go.
The real
advantage of low-tech/no-tech? It saves money for initiatives that really could
benefit from smart use of technology. After all, no company or organization, no
matter how wealthy, can afford to do ALL the technology projects it wants to
do. Like families and individuals, especially in tough times, organizations
must redouble efforts to spend where it makes most impact. That means making
difficult but necessary choices. The good news is that, like it or not, we’ve
had to get better at making those choices over these last couple of rocky
years. Maybe it’s time to dig deeper and ask a new set of tough questions as a
routine part of our planning.
We’re not talking here about "chindogu," the Japanese
art of purposely creating clever but ridiculous inventions and technologies.
We’re talking about smarter technology budgeting, in the big sense: leveraging
technology where it has greatest impact, and seeking simpler perhaps nontechnical
solutions that free finite resources for truly tech-worthy efforts.
That holds
true for organizations and in our personal lives as well. A quick personal
example …
White-Hot Techno Lust
For many
years I’ve secretly wanted one of those slick electronic whiteboards, the kind
that lets you print, store and e-mail your markings. Not a must-have, but a
good tool, I thought, for a scrawling, sprawling knowledge worker like me. The price, you’ve guessed, was problematic:
roughly $3,000.
So when I
saw this new whiteboard paint for around $20, I was
psyched. Tape off an area, brush on any wall and BAM—in two days, dry-erase
heaven. Maybe I’d turn my entire office
into one big erasable situation room (watch it Wolf Blitzer, I’m coming for
you) and still have enough money left over for some nice sweet, fruit-scented
markers. If I want electronic copies, I can snap and circ a perfectly good
image with my cell phone.
OK, it
sounds like a silly example. After all, who
really needs a whiteboard with integral disk storage and wireless
technology? (Answer: Almost no one.) In truth, I felt a little embarrassed for
wanting such a costly optional luxury.
It was another reminder of tech-lust’s seductive powers in our private
and public lives.
I quickly
got over my shame, and my wife and I started playing a little game: thinking of
things done better and more cheaply without fancy technology. (I know what
you’re thinking: pretty stupid for someone who’s made a nice living from the
tech industry. But stay with me here; low-tech actually will help tech
suppliers.) We quickly came up with a bunch, including:
Clotheslines instead of big electric
dryers
A nice simple wooden pencil instead
of a $300 pen input device (OK, I also wanted one of those)
Right on!Posted on: 09-21-09 | By: EliseThe site where you found those entertaining calculations, Kris De Decker's Low Tech Magazine (lowtechmagazine.com), basically constitutes the list you seek.
technology solves a problemPosted on: 07-18-09 | By: samIf you merely want to scribble ideas to yourself you don't need that $3,000 whiteboard.
Imagine that you had a dozen people who are quite technophobic. Instead of using a PC whiteboard software you have your executives use the $3k whiteboard. Then during the presentation all the sketches are periodically emailed to a tech mailbox.
After the meeting is over you email or fax it to the all the participants. Everyone is happy.
Clothes dryers are useful since it dries the clothes much faster than outside. Frankly drying clothes on the line is counter-productive. You are taking clean but wet clothes outside. Then before you know now you have dust, pollen, and other pollutants on your clothes. Your clothes are dry, but now dirty.
I'd a bit of an odd-ball since I don't a personal cell phone. If I am out of the house, I don't want anyone to talk to me anyway.
We should never forget technology has a place. I am tired of the Luddites thinking a typewriter is better than a pc and a word processor. Or, that we should get rid of washers, dryers, and dish washers.
A good ideaPosted on: 06-30-09 | By: Joe MaglittaBruce - Interesting. What do you see as the biggest problem?
Fastest Mode of TransportationPosted on: 06-25-09 | By: Bruce W. Fowler, Ph.D.Thank you. Cogent and much better posed than my arguments to executives and IT deltas. Can you do a similar piece on latency in email for the executives and their secretaries that is as lucid and substantive? It would be a great boon to those of us who have to cope with management and trade school graduates who are orthogonal to physical reality.
ConservationPosted on: 06-20-09 | By: Joe MaglittaI see in re-reading this that what we're really talking about is a spectrum of conservation. At the low end are examples like unplugging idles chargers, etc. as in the Times piece. At the other, deciding not to use advanced tech in the first place. That may be the ultimate conservation strategy... .
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 06-20-09 | By: Joe MaglittaThanks for checking in. I'm a believer that a little thought-provoking is a good start to bigger changes. If this particular path is not for you, all good. Plenty to wrestle with out there...
