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Web providers must limit internet’s carbon footprint, say experts
Bobbie Johnson, The Guardian
The internet’s increasing appetite for electricity poses a major threat to companies such as Google, according to scientists and industry executives.
Leading figures have told the Guardian that many internet companies are struggling to manage the costs of delivering billions of web pages, videos and files online – in a “perfect storm” that could even threaten the future of the internet itself.
“In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet … we need to rein in the energy consumption,” said Subodh Bapat, vice-president at Sun Microsystems, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of web servers.
Bapat said the network of web servers and data centres that store online information is becoming more expensive, while profits come under pressure as a result of the recession.
(3 May 2009)
Caught in the net
James Harkin, The New Statesman
Whatever prophets of the net say, information for its own sake is not power. Power is power. The relentless gush of electronic information and invitations to offer feedback which now come our way can often obscure where real power lies
…The internet is one of the most dazzling inventions of the past 50 years, indispensable to the way we live today. But the truth is that many of those in authority have stopped seeing the internet as a medium by which people send messages and receive feedback via a loop of electronic information. Instead, they have invested the flow of electronic information with a metaphysical significance about human nature and how things work. That is why politicians can talk about the net as a revolution. It’s how they can see a game of sending out information into the electronic ether and batting back feedback as having anything to do with democracy. And it’s why some thinkers have begun to imagine that online gadgetry might level the economic playing field and might even begin to alleviate inequality – that it might, in the memorable phrase of the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, succeed in making the world flat.
…This picture of ourselves as essentially messaging creatures has now so far inveigled itself into our lives that we barely notice. It began as an idea that we could benefit from being joined together in a continuous loop of instruction and feedback. It is not without its uses. Google’s enormous success in the search-engine business owes something to the cybernetic idea. While other online search engines were using human editors to serve us up a range of information, Google’s brilliant technicians realised as early as a decade ago that the best way to organise the information out there on the web was to stitch every piece of information together in a series of sophisticated feedback loops.
…As computer networks found their way everywhere, however, the idea that we can be treated as information processors on a giant social network was ushered in. One reason that politicians can be reluctant to question all this is that, with the fading of the conventional ideologies of left and right, there seem to be precious few good ideas around for organising the good society. That is why David Cameron was so keen to make the pilgrimage to Google’s headquarters, and why Gordon Brown chooses to address Google conferences and be seen under its banner. For the same reason, many mainstream institutions are in thrall to the hokum of a new breed of internet evangelists. At the same time as newspapers in Britain and the US are firing trained journalists and cutting their staff numbers, many of them are also paying huge fees to listen to modish ideas about how net-based collaboration (so-called crowdsourcing) might help to reinvent their operations.
…This is all very well, but without directions to guide us through this ocean of electronic information, the danger is that we might drown in the data. Transparency is all very well, but not all of us are investigative journalists. Politicians are supposed to make sense of the mountain of data that comes their way and to shape it into arguments and ideas – not simply throw it back to us in digital form, to see what we think.
It is true that many of our mainstream cultural and political institutions lack legitimacy and are limping from one crisis to the next. They are out of sync with the populace, and they seem to know it. All of this presents exciting possibilities for those of us who are interested in change. Yet we should be wary of letting the information geeks inherit the earth, wary of replacing the crumbling authority of the media and political classes with a glut of electronic information and phantom ideas about democracy and equality.
(30 April 2009)
This Year Will Bring a True Sea Change
Jeff Jarvis, Spiegel Online Internationalinterview
US media expert Jeff Jarvis is predicting a massive shift in the American media market this year — the death of print newspapers across the country. In an interview, he explains why he believes the future for serious journalism lies with Web sites like Twitter and Google News.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what role, in your opinion, can newspapers still play?
Jarvis: They certainly no longer want to be in the paper business because that is dying out. The information business might be fine but there is no scarcity of information and news online. They could, however, be very effective in the collection business — just find the best of the stuff that is out there online. They could also use their strong brands to compete in the business of elegant organization by creating information platforms or venturing into new markets. The New York Times has just started a new local program in New York enlisting my journalism students to collaborate online with them to report on their communities. That is the right approach. News outlets need to think distributed, they must collaborate with bloggers or social networking sites. On my blog, I have links to Google News or Google Maps. Innovative newspapers like the Guardian in Britain are equally open to cooperation. They make all their content available free online, they link to all sorts of sites, and in turn they receive more links in return.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But media outlets have hardly managed to transform these links into revenues.
Jarvis: First of all, tremendous efficiencies can be found in the online revolution. Publishers no longer have to pay for expensive presses or trucks. They can operate with a much smaller staff. Start ups can create news and entertain communities at a much smaller cost by forming the kind of networks I described. There are many other new options: A hyperlocal journalism approach, for instance. Or platforms with a whole of networks consisting of bloggers, next to foundations, next to publicly supported reporting, next to volunteers. But we will also investigate whether a paid content model can still work in the digital age.
(5 May 2009)
