On 9/28/2011 4:40 AM, pabitra saha wrote:
>
>
> Why should there be printing? Save the image/ text on the cloud and use
> it or send it whenever /wherever you need.
> Before Ipod, people could not expect mobile device without memory card.
> Before Ipod touch, people never wanted a personal organiser without
> keyboard.
> Before Iphone 1, users could not visualise a phone without normal SIM or
> replacable batteries.
> Before Ipad, people could not imagine a product without USB port.
> Go paperless, save trees, get carbon credits.
>
Why should there be a cloud?
Your concept that maybe there shouldn't be printing is just as absurd as
my concept that there shouldn't be a "cloud." Carbon credits for not
printing? How about negative carbon credits for cloud users -- have you
any idea what huge electricity power drain all those gigantic server
farms are, that will be necessary to store everybody's "cloud" data, if
we all made that leap?
Paper at least is recyclable -- electricity sucked down by server farms
isn't.
Who's using more energy -- a person printing a few documents (but who
obviously needs to have a paper supply) or a person who has to reserve
server farm space for their little corner of the cloud, even if they're
only using a tiny bit of it to hold documents until they can get to
their computer to print from there? When you get a cloud account,
there's a minimum amount of storage space set aside for you to use (or
not use) as you see fit. But if a million people sign onto that
service, then they have to have a million times that storage space
available, and make it available 24 hours a day, which means keeping
those serves sucking down electricity even when they're not actually in
use, so that they are always available.
Just because you don't see the carbon-consequences of something doesn't
mean there aren't any -- that's the nasty secret the electric industry
wants us all to forget as they encourage more and more power usage. The
cloud is no more carbon friendly than printing is.
--
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
