[CAnet - news] The Internet's role in aggravating and alleviating the energy crises

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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[Another excellent analysis by Andrew Odlyzko on Internet's role in
aggravating and alleviating the Internet. I fully agree with his analysis on
the limited of possibility of reducing CO2 emission by substituting
transportation of atoms with electrons (or photons) through telecommuting
and tele-presence.  These are useful applications, but the real power of the
Internet to affect human behaviour in reducing CO2 emissions will come in
other areas  - as for example  in the (yet unproven) idea of providing
"carbon reward" rather than taxes by offering free eProducts and eServices
in exchange for consumers reducing their own carbon footprint in other
aspects of their lives. Consumers control or influence 60% of human
generated CO2 emissions, so the Internet may be powerful tool to induce them
to change their behaviour.  --- BSA]



http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/internet.energy.crises.txt

The Internet has long been touted as a major weapon in reducing road
congestion, through enabling and stimulating telecommuting.
More recently, it has been promoted as a means to fight global
warming.  (An excellent source of information on these topics is Bill
St. Arnaud's "Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure" blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/.)  But these hopes fly in the face
of centuries of experience.  It is likely that the Internet will play
a major role in alleviating problems caused by any of several energy
crises that we face, but if so, this will not take place as commonly 
expected.

[..]


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