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 - Mrs. Cleaver Would Be Right at Home Here
Mrs.
Cleaver Would Be Right at Home Here
Here are a couple more interesting examples of no-tech/low-tech thinking:
The Walking School Bus. You
gotta love this one.Basically, a
bunch of school children walking
to school with one or more adults, parents or volunteers. What will they think
of next? Good for the environment AND preventing chunky children.
Variation: the bicycle train. Cheap, fun, healthy, no smelly, gas-sucking
diesel buses.
Less mobile phone use. Cover your ears, Sprint,
AT&T and Verizon. Limiting cell
phone time is not just for nagging ‘rents anymore. According to some estimates,
making and using cell phones is the biggest energy suck in the world today.
Let’s go back to Low-tech mag (where you’ll find lots of other fun examples,
as well its engaging sister pub, No Tech):
They note the cell phone user is expected to have 35 (!) phones in his
life!
The mobile telephone
infrastructure also consumes more energy than the fixed phone infrastructure.
According to a Swiss study
dating from December 2004, transmitting information over a mobile network costs
3 times more energy than over a fixed network (including the extra copper and
fibre glass used by the fixed phone network).
"The
transfer of one gigabit of information (around 500 minutes of calls)
corresponds to the energy use of driving a car for 200 kilometres or 125
miles"
The amount of energy used is not small:
during its lifetime a mobile phone equals an average energy consumption of 260
megajoules (MJ) – 180 MJ for the manufacturing and 80 MJ for the usage phase.
260 MJ is enough to power 1,200 60-
watt
light bulbs for one hour.
They suggest greater use of
landlines and other mobile alternatives. Not to bum you out completely:
The
energy consumption of electronic devices is skyrocketing, as was recently
reported by the International Energy Association ("Gadgets
and Gigawatts"). According to the research paper, the electricity
consumption of computers, cell phones, flat-screen TVs, iPods and other gadgets
will double by 2022 and triple by 2030. This comes down to the need for an
additional 280 gigawatts of power generation capacity. An earlier report from
the British Energy Saving Trust (The Ampere Strikes Back - pdf) came to similar conclusions.
And this is
why IT vendors needn’t fear this impulse. It’s counterintuitive, but think: All
vendors want successful implementations with big results, right? By helping
customers tackle only the highest payoff initiatives, they boost chances of
everyone’s success. It’s a win-win.
Economies Must Meet in the Middle
A final
thought. There’s an interesting paradox about the low-tech/no-tech
approach:
For heavily
industrialized economies, ironically,
“smart” technology use in this context means taking another look at the ways
and means of less developed economies
that rely on human power, wind and other more basic mechanical technologies.
At the same
time, developing economies, especially the poorest, with limited resources,
must carefully choose the technologies with the biggest payoffs as they evolve
toward their more advanced nations. Less of a worry here; people far smarter
than I are devoting their lives to this.
Undoubtedly
developed and developing worlds have much to teach the other in maximizing
resources.
Low-tech/no-tech
isn’t a blanket strategy. It makes good sense in some areas, not in others. So
fluff the pigeon, lace up those Keds, and start thinking about where less tech
could mean more.
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...
