I read an article in the British press claiming that computers caused as much global warming as the airline industry. I personally doubt it. But the most amazing this in this article is how they want to solve the problem: replacing the computers with dumb “green terminals” while applications, office, mail programs… and people’s private data, mails, family pictures… would be hosted on a government owned super computer!! Doesn’t that remind us of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where TV sets were spying on people? Only this time it’s becoming even worse.

There is no doubt that the manufacturing of computers isn’t clean, that shipping them from Asia does indeed contribute to the global warming. But what about all the other home appliances, game consoles, huge high definition TV sets, wireless phones, VCRs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners… Why tackle the issue of computers?

Let’s ponder some facts:

1/ People do renew their computers too often because Windows keeps getting slower. I’m still using an eight year old computer without Windows, running GNU/Linux, and it’s working really fine. People could keep their computers much longer and thus pollute less if computers weren’t preinstalled with the lousy spyware infected Windows.

2/ Thanks to personal computers many people can, or could, work from home, do what’s called telecommuting. This way they’d save a lot petrol.

3/ Personal computers can replace other equipment like TVs, VCRs, Hi-Fi, phones… This way save a lot of energy.

4/ E-commerce lets people buy online. When I’m looking for a book I usually order it on the net. This way I don’t have to drive to 10 different bookshops. I’m sure millions of people are doing the same and so saving petrol.

It seems that computers are part of the solution and not the cause of global warming. This doesn’t mean of course that computers shouldn’t be more environment friendly. But it seems that the UK government is now using what it calls “cyber warming” as a lame excuse to spy on people inside their homes.

People in the U.K. are filmed by CCTV cameras on average 300 times per day. There are also cameras which are able to recognize cars’ license plates and now they are even testing new smart cameras which are able to recognize people’s faces (so they can automatically track all peoples’ whereabouts). Thanks to interactive digital TV the government can see what you are watching and while they are at it, they want Internet service providers to keep track of what we see on the net. The only thing missing was a way to spy on people (who don’t use digital TV) inside their homes. It seems that this last issue should be solved by 2009.

Thank you big brother!!

Link to the article

E.d’Aubignosc