Everything we do has an unintended consequence.
Beyond that and to further complicate matters, the language
we use suggests innocence when in fact the reality is quite different.
Images created by the digital world seem harmless and even
friendly with such metaphors as “cloud computing” engendering images of beautiful,
fluffy, white clouds drifting across the sky demanding nothing of earth’s
physical resources.
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| The image of cloud computing - green grass and fluffy, white and harmless clouds. |
The reality, however, is quite different.
Those “clouds” are not fluffy, white and harmless, they are
like the dark, black and intense clouds of a violent storm, in fact warehouses
full of computer servers that devour a frighteningly amount of electricity;
electricity generated by power plants fuelled almost exclusive by the villain of
climate change, coal.
The New York Times in a story headed: “Power, Pollution and the Internet”, tells the alarming story about the realities of “cloud computing”
and the impact our seemingly friendly digital world is having on the real
world, the world we actually live in.
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