Environmental Costs of Computer Use? 390
arhines asks: "I'm working on a little research project to figure out what the environmental cost of heavy technological reliance is, and want any suggestions Slashdot has for factors to consider. My school has started requiring students to own and use laptops in all of their classes, under the pretext of saving paper. Having read about the problems with computer recycling on Slashdot, I've become suspicious of the true effect of having several hundred computers thrown out each year. What statistics should I focus on, and are there any definitive studies on the topic you could point me to?"
Environmental cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Environmental cost? (Score:2)
Yeah though, technology for technology's sake is a bad thing... ludditism for luddist sake is also a bad thing
Saving paper (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Saving paper (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had several classes where the professor made thier powerpoint slides available online, and some people would go and print out the entire presentation before class; they eventually ended up changing the system so you had to be logged in to print and putting a cap on how much each person could print per semester.
Re:Saving paper (Score:5, Insightful)
But I have to admit, the impulse to print is strong. In the info age, printing is an activity that makes you feel like you are actually doing something. It is odd working 12 hour shifts at a desk and having nothing that physically represents the days' work. Just changing the pattern of 1s and 0s on a hard disk is an odd way to make a living. Printing the web page makes it look like you did something.
[ctrl-p] look at 10 page print out of
Re:Even worse when you get to homework (Score:5, Interesting)
It's especially cute that the department at my college that seems the least inclined to grade and return my papers electronically rather than printing them out is the environmental studies department. The most inclined is the Math dept., where some professors won't even accept hardcopies anymore.
Plus, using electronic sources leads to paper wastage, too. A textbook is used over and over. If you hand students an electronic source, many of them will print it out, then throw it away. And again next year. And again. And again. And again.
And then there's all of the cute pictures people find on the 'net and print out. .
Re:Even worse when you get to homework (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this has to do with the fact that paper is easier to look at. If you have to read 100 papers, sitting at the computer reading is a lot harder on your eyes than looking at paper. Not to mention, you can sit back in a chair and read papers, while typically you have to sit
Re:Even worse when you get to homework (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, speaking from experience I can honestly say that grading a paper electronically is a right pain in the arse. It's almost downright impossible if it's mathematically heavy (as in lots of equations, something computers and word processors especiall are still not very good at
Re:My experience (Score:3, Informative)
As for homework, I started requiring all homework be submitted electronically years ago. First on 3.5" diskettes, then on CD-R and now most is Email. For example, this past semester I taught a course in advanced C++. All assigments were emailed to me, I woul
The problems with PPT (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh yes. I've been trying to convince faculty to make their PPTs more general and NOT required to print out to get a good grade. My comments have fallen mostly on deaf ears, but I think some people are thinking about this.
The real issue is that PPT is a poor-mans text book. Okay, so Jane Professor has had her book rejected eighteen times. So she pushes an abridged version of her rejected book in PPT format. Everyone prints it out and take notes on it. Score: Professor's ego 1, envinronment 0. It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have to buy another book, usually VERY underutilized, for the class because of department requirements. Worse, these types of teachers always have it in for the required book. Really now, your half-assed PPTs are no substitute for a decent book on the subject, a book with an index, and clearly labeled chapters.
Some professors do use PPT properly: as outlines to lectures and not as quasi-books. These outlines rarely need to be printed out as the notes you take in your notebook work just as well.
There are some serious usability issues with PPT becoming the new micro-publishing. It wouldnt be so bad if we all had tablet laptops that we could take notes right on with a stylus, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, if ever.
How to save paper (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How to save paper (Score:4, Funny)
There's nothing like peer pressure!
Re:Saving paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Saving paper (Score:2, Interesting)
The primary reason is organization. It's a lot easier to find a file on a computer then it is in a notebook, plus everything you need is in one place, and it allows you to easily access another piece of work or study material after you finished
Re:Saving paper (Score:2, Insightful)
The sound of people typing would drive me nuts.
Computers sound like a horrible distraction kids would be better off without in the classroom. (Note that I make an exception for blind students for whom a laptop may be a great option as mechanical braille machines are very noisy.)
Paper works just fine and you're not out $1000+ if it gets stolen. Frankly, I'm not even a
Re:Saving paper (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Saving paper (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're an 8th grader at a Jr. High/Middle School I take it you must go to school in a ritzy area to want to actually haul your $1000+ (or even $200 old beater) laptop around all the rif-raf that go to most public schools these days...
Besides, aren't most 8t
Re:Saving paper (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm in a room where someone's talking and scribbling equations on a blackboard, I can do a much better job of recording what's important with pencil and paper than I could ever fantasize about punching into a laptop, and I'm a touch typist.
I've played with everything from Word or TeX, and I don't know any way of entering a differential equation or a matrix into a computer that's faster than just scribbling it down with a layer of graphite on a dead tree. (Besides, how the hell could I hear the professor with all the damn click-clicking of 100 keyboards? :-)
I believe in using the best tool for the job. Laptops are a good tool for many applications, but taking notes in class ain't one of them.
Re:Saving paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that they should require students to use recycled paper instead. Of course I feel that everybody should use recycled paper. We've taught people to recycle, now we need to teach them to purchase the damn products. Otherwise the recycled paper won't be cheaper than normal paper until tree's are so rare that they cost more to chop down.
Mr. Gates will see you now... (Score:4, Funny)
psxndc
Re:Mr. Gates will see you now... (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmm... how much do you wanna bet these PC's being suggested "under the pretext of saving paper" aren't Linux boxen?
Re:Saving paper (Score:4, Funny)
Seems rather simple to me. Just gotta make sure the image->text converter translates integral symbols as such and not as capitol "S"'s.
It is
Re:Saving paper (Score:2)
Additionally, if students were to have a well designed laptop, like the Fujitsu Lifebook P2000 series, they'd have the ability to (surprise) write using a stylus on the LCD into photoshop or some other program. Then they'd be able to save notes in an intelligent and easily organizeable manner, and they'd be able to write mathmatics symbols easil
Re:Saving paper (Score:2)
1/2 of the screen is an text window (handwriting recognition), the other half a window to draw the equations in. A scripted button to save the equations as pictures and drop them into the text file. Later on, I just go through and type the equations in by hand. Saves a whol
Re:Saving paper (Score:3, Funny)
That's right. Look at pr0n.
What do you need to look at pr0n?
Lots of tissue paper.
What are tissue papers made of?
Trees.
What do trees do?
Take Carbon Dioxide out the air.
What's Carbon Dioxide responsible for?
Global Warming.
Thus, computers are responsible for Global Warming. QED.
Re:Saving paper (Score:2)
Re ... cy ... cle? (Score:5, Funny)
Thrown out? (Score:3, Flamebait)
How many people do you know that throw out computers? Have you been in a school lately? They almost NEVER throw out computers until they're REALLY old. And I'm talking like 10 years, or most of the time MORE than that.
Re:Yeah, and then they're THROWN OUT (Score:2)
they get thrown out all the time (Score:2)
In any case, these computers, being owned by presumably upper-class students (not by the school), are significantly more likely to be thrown out when something new comes out.
Re:Thrown out? (Score:2)
However, if people are throwing out 1yr old lappys, email me. I'll be glad to take them off your
Re:Thrown out? (Score:2)
Are you joking? A 6-year-old Pentium-100 laptop is still worth about $150; $200 with a working battery. Even a 486 or 386 laptop still has a market, and people who can use them.
If you bought a P-100 desktop 6 years ago, everything in it is too old to keep when upgrading. The CPU/MB/EDO memory, 1 meg video card, 1-2 gig HD, 4x CD, 10BaseT lan card, SB16 audio if you're lucky.
Re:Thrown out? (Score:2)
And the case? Well, the case is gonna
Re:Thrown out? (Score:2)
Re:Thrown out? (Score:2)
Energy cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Hamster
Con: (Score:2)
Re:Energy cost (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it does. Also if the paper has already been recycled once and the fibers are now too small to produce another sheet of paper there is a good chance you can shred the paper, water it, throw some aerobic bacteria on it and turn it into compost. The compost can then be used to fertilize more trees for use as paper.
It's a renewable resource.
Long live paper!
Also the Energy Cost of Manufacture (Score:2, Insightful)
I've heard this argument before for washing machines. "Economy" type Washing machines supposedly use less water than washing your clothes by hand will. However the amount of water required to create the machine in the first place would be enough to wash a year's washing (or so - the exact statistic escapes me).
So yeah I agree, the only thing they're saving is tre
Throwing Out Comps Every Year? (Score:2, Insightful)
People who through out perfectly good comp's just because they aren't top of the line need to be beaten with a clue-by-four [catb.org].
Statistics to focus on... (Score:3, Funny)
There is no 2.
The best kind of recycling.... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can add up all the stacks of paper, and the consumables needed to print them (probably ink cartridges) and measure the environmental impact vs. shared computers vs. individually owned vs. manual typewriters. It will be a lovely set of graphs on which you can probably get an A in any environmental studies course you're taking.
None of the options will hold a candle to buying used laptops, on Ebay and all over the net, and turning in your paper's electronically with them. No paper, negative waste (if you're saving them from the landfills for a while). Nothing compares.
If you're school has an IT department, they could make the purchase/reuse and reconfiguration of such devices a small part of the curriculum and sell them to students at the cost of the parts, with fresh clean OS's and the proper tools for the hardware in question. You don't need a Transmeta Crusoe for word processing. A K6-2 or P2-350 will be just fine.
Re:The best kind of recycling.... (Score:2)
Re:The best kind of recycling.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lithium Ion Batteries need to be replaced and disposed of every 3-4 years.
Hard drives fail after about 4-5 years (avg).
Keyboards break after about 3-4 years (in much less time)
And accidents happen...
The impact on the environment of 1 laptop is probably much more than going through 50 reams of paper.
Erm... (Score:2)
Use what the Chinese use... (Score:5, Funny)
* Requires no power.
* Portable.
* Scalable. Just add more beads.
* Ultra-stable.
* Low cost of entry.
* Lasts indefinitely.
* Reboots by shaking!
* Completely royalty free. Open Source.
* Recyclable. Pass it down to your kids!
* Secure. No one can hack your abacus.
* No need to localize to other languages.
* No install package needed.
* One interface to learn (forget Aqua, Luna, KDE, Gnome, etc).
* Friendly to modders (wood, bamboo, aluminum?).
No internet access or Office-like apps though.
Re:Use what the Chinese use... (Score:5, Funny)
* Requires no power.
* Portable.
* Ultra-stable.
* Low cost of entry.
* Lasts indefinitely.
* Secure..
* No need to localize to other languages.
* No install package needed.
* One interface to learn (forget Aqua, Luna, KDE, Gnome, etc).
* Friendly to modders (wood, bamboo, aluminum?).
* Reboots by shaking!
An Etch-a-Sketch also has these advantages as well- and you can draw a doggy on it!
Re:Use what the Chinese use... (Score:2)
And does one even know recyle that those silver things inside an Etch-a-Sktech?
Re:Use what the Chinese use... (Score:2)
Re:Use what the Chinese use... (Score:2)
I think I just got dumber by typing that.
Did they do any cost analysis? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider: laptops have batteries, batteries require charging, charging comes from wall outlets, wall outlets require power generation, most power generation is from coal. (I use a similar argument in my choice to use disposable diapers with my child: cloth diapers require water, solvents, and sewers.)
When I was an undergraduate, we were forbidden from having microwave ovens in our dorm rooms. (I realize I'm showing my age here.) The reason? They used too much electricity. The university would have to raise dorm room prices across the board to accomodate those few people who used microwave ovens.
My coworkers say I'm an amazingly fast typist, but a lot of people can get by with a few scribbles even quicker than I can and still make sense of it. Such a regimentalizing of laptops could well affect students' capability for learning. It's one thing to recommend them, another thing to mandate them.
Cost Analyze eBooks. (Score:2)
Who knows, an OSS iniative to create open source textbooks could wipe out one of the biggest expenses of students. The OSS texts would probably be better quality and more current than the current texts used by schools.
Re:Did they do any cost analysis? (Score:2, Informative)
I would sure hope that any male wearing diapers would not be worrying about infertility. Surely it's not permanent (heat kills sperm, but unless it's heat on the level of actually damaging the testicles it shouldn't damage the ability to create more sperm).
Left handers are funny (Score:3, Funny)
AOL CDs (Score:2)
Re:AOL CDs (Score:2, Insightful)
To bring this somewhat back on-topic, I wonder if AOL has considered including more software on the CDs. The AOL software probably doesn't take up all of the available space (anybody know how much?), so if they were to include something useful on the CD, it might encourage people to keep them instead of automatically throwing them out.
Wouldn't you be more likely to keep a CD that said "1000 hours of AOL + free Commander Keen game!"?
Re:AOL CDs (Score:5, Funny)
I am cynical about this. (Score:3, Redundant)
Start with the fact that computers get obsolete pretty quickly when compared to many other things we buy. So maybe every three or four years, we're stuck with a lot of computer hardware that is hard to dispose of or get rid of. It's hard to sell a four year old computer since the technology moves so quickly: their resale value plummets with every faster model.
Next think about how on earth do you recycle a computer? It's not a soda can or paper. What often happens is the parts are sold off and shipped to China, where people in villages are paid to take the computer components apart to get at the trace metals ... in the process leaking all kinds of toxins into the water supply. Great.
Last, I recall a study showing that the paperless office has been exposed to be a myth. While on the surface it would seem having computers everywhere would save paper, the truth of the matter is more paper is consumed. I'm sure you know of people (mostly execs and grandparents) that print out every email since they like reading on paper, not a screen. And how about people printing out their digital photos? If the paperless office were taking hold, we'd be seeing a lot less printer sales, where the opposite is the case: it's expected every computer you buy, comes with a printer.
I actually think as computer technology takes greater hold and becomes more ubiquitous, we will see more waste and more environmental destruction as a result. This has more to do with the fact it's just getting cheaper and cheaper at a faster rate. People toss cell phones in the trash now. I think the only thing that will stop this process is for technology to be made with easy recycling in mind from the start. But I think it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
well (Score:5, Informative)
Florida Environmental Report states about Computers and Monitors:
"Out of 175 million computers comes a laundry list of toxins including 650 million pounds of lead, 987,000 pounds of cadmium and 231,000 pounds of mercury.
Each CRT (Cathode-Ray Tube) contains four to six pounds of lead. (New York Times, November 23, 2000)
According to University of Florida tests, color monitors contain enough lead to contaminate ground water if deposited in landfills. "Those monitors would fail the legal standards of leaching lead," said Susan Mooney of the EPA, Region 5 (Chicago).
These computers also contain 2 billion pounds of plastic. "
so thats like 1/4 pound of lead per PC on top of the 4 to 6 per monitor. so thats a lot of lead.
http://members.aol.com/Ramola15/funfacts.html
"Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person."
so lets say you throw your computer out every three years. thats about 18 pounds of lead versus 2000 pounds of paper over three years. imagine throwing your honda civic, made of paper, into the ground. then cover it with something like 1/5 a gallon of molten lead (crappy math, hey i think its within an order of magnitude).
which do you feel worse about? the honda civic sized paper ball or the fifth of lead?
public service announcement: i have a 10th grade math education
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/sa
Re:well (Score:2)
oh wait, uhbuh. well heck, how's about someone with an 11th grade math education fix that giant error. hey better idea, just click the @#$% links and dont do any math at all. that's really a better idea. hey, the basic point is that everyone reading this site with a computer is an evil lead polluter. unless you recycle, of course.
Re:well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well (Score:4, Informative)
Dumping paper in the ocean? Paper isn't just pure pulp you know. It contains chemicals to.
Impractical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, my experience with high school students (I work with an 11th grade class that meets in a computer lab) is that, given access to computers, the first things they do are check their email and start loading up websites containing either games or (depending on gender) romance or sports information.
Computers are certainly a great tool - I can't even do my work without internet access anymore, since I'm constantly looking up a research paper or TeX command I need - but at the middle school level, it sees as if you're going to have to devote a lot of time making the students close off the games and get back to work..
Brings back memories of calculators (Score:2)
I might be dating myself, but I remember when I was back in middle school / highschool, there was a big controversy about allowing us to have scientific calculators. Not that we would be checking email and loading websites on them, but that knowing our times tables and how to add and subtract BY HAND would be "more practical" for us. Needless to say the griping teachers and parents we silenced in the name of inevitable progress.
I also remember taking a typing class and they were all manual typewriters.
A Modest Suggestion: (Score:2)
Don't count on /. to do your homework for you. In the first instance, it's better to do your work yourself, and in the second instance, you have to remember: "garbage in, garbage out". Maybe you should seek you an environmental scientist or environmental engineering prof. who does research on the long term environmental impact of computers instead.
Run Linux!!! (Score:2)
*duck*
Trying to slashdot your own school? (Score:2)
Tackle the BIG environmental waste (Score:2, Insightful)
Do everyone a favor and stop at one kid.
Someone's going to mark me as a troll here, but what I'm saying is the truth. Not many people want to hear it though.
Darwin Says Population Control Is Bunk (Score:2)
We tried population control, but for some reason the people that believe in it and pass it on as a value to their child are becoming fewer and fewer, while those who believe in having large families and preach that as a virtue continue to increase. :)
There is no population explosion anyway--just population shifts. We eradicated smallpox and malaria in the 3rd world, and surprise, surprise, people reproduce like gangbusters. Sooner or later, they'll reach a point where they want to send their kids to col
Get with the program (Score:3, Insightful)
Recycling? Try the NSA solution (Score:5, Informative)
The National Security Agency (NSA) instituted a program some years ago by which they decided to get some money and reuseability out of the obsolete pieces of equipment they were required to destroy (due to classification issues) rather than give to DRMO to be resold to the public.
The NSA has to destroy a lot of circuit boards and electronic devices like hard drives and they have to do so thoroughly. Many of these devices as we all know contain valuable precious and industrial metals like gold, platinum, and so forth. So, they built an industrial plant that could extract as much useful material as possible from the destroyed equipment, and they would resell that to the public for a profit. They also do this with the pulp that comes from the destruction of paper documents and such. What can't be reused is disposed of in accordance with environmental regulations.
This program has turned out to be so successful that the NSA actually turns a significant profit (to the tune of several million dollars a year) and sends this profit back into the Federal Treasury.
I am sure that this could become a viable business in the civilian world for some smart entrepreneurs out there.
Re:Recycling? Try the NSA solution (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/News/Ear
It says that in 1998, the reutilization program was able to donate $13 million to schools, among other things..
a new hope (Score:2, Interesting)
and as for schools, the thing we should look forward to the most is not laptops in the classroom but the classroom in the laptop
Less paper? ROFL (Score:2)
Kjella
Flawed article - easy fix (Score:2)
Of course, the human would quickly go extinct at that point (for obvious dating/hygine issues), but I just think of that as Mother Nature getting her turn at bat.
... human RACE would... (Score:2)
</kicks self for typos making lame joke even lamer>
It wouldn't work for me (Score:2, Interesting)
You must have attended private school or have read (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about saving paper. It's about making parents feel good about dropping $15,000 a year on high school... after all, the kids use laptops in their classes; our investment in little Johnny will result in opportunities that those poor kids in public school won't have. Don't waste your time thinking about environmental impact. This is marketing.
I went to a private school [kent-school.edu] as well, one of the high-falutin' variety. I loved every minute of it, even if I was a scrubby kid from a lower class neighborhood with a penchant for cynicism, science, and lacrosse. I'm not suggesting your school is good or bad for their decision. If the result of this policy is that more kids with a polished high school education find their way to techie universities instead of the standard small liberal arts colleges most attend now, than I'd consider the policy a good one.
It's not an environmental issue. It's also not a cost issue -- if your parents (or some donor) can afford to send you to a top notch snoot school, than they can afford to buy you a laptop too. It'll come to less than 3% of the overall cost of your high school education. It's a marketing decision, and headmasters, chancellors, and presidents of schools across the country are making the same decisions, based on a poor understanding of IT but a solid understanding of their potential customers.
Laptop Vs. CRT vs. Education (Score:5, Insightful)
And even aside from the teaching, do the classrooms have enough *electricity* for them? You can't depend on a laptop having more than an hour's battery life, in spite of what the ads said when they were brand new (which was usually overoptimistic then, and battery life decreases rapidly as machines get to be a couple of years old, so the _seniors_ are definitely going to need to plug in their machines if they haven't replaced the ones they bought freshman year.) On the other hand, if schools can use them to replace paper copies of textbooks, so the kids who are getting new laptop weight to carry around in their backpacks can leave their books back in their rooms, that may be a win. Works fine for classical literature (anything out of copyright, i.e. pre-Disney), but not so hot for most of the textbook market.
They're not going to save any natural resources by having you use computers instead of paper. Nor will they save money. Sure, the paper you use in a year will probably outweigh the computer, but you'll spend more than $100/year on computers, while you won't conceivably use that much paper writing by hand
The real environmental costs have to include the disposal costs of the equipment. Laptop LCD screens are much smaller and lighter than CRTs, and other people have talked about the leaded glass and phosphor problems with CRTs. LCDs are semiconductor-based, which means there's a certain amount of toxic waste involved in the production; I don't know if it's more or less than monitors. Fortunately, Nickel Cadmium batteries are a thing of the past, but how toxic are the current battery technologies?
And how long do these things last, and how upgradable are they? Laptops are usually slower than desktops made at the same time, with smaller disks and RAM for the money. How many years will they last before being obsolete? My experience carrying a laptop around as a business traveller and train commuter was that they're not super-durable, especially the ones that are light enough that you're willing to carry them around all that time. How will they survive students?
Ignore the truth (Score:2)
Also, to get to the real truth will cost you too much time and money.
Just go ahead with the flow, turn in some report that basically says high technoloy is bad for the environment, and that we need to go back to a time when we worked with out hands, etc. etc.
You can easily create some spin that Capitalism is at fault.
Start with which way is cheaper. (Score:2)
Larger View (Score:2)
I don't know how far you want to take your thesis regarding the impact of technological reliance and the environment, but I would look at labor statistics for as far back as you can find. Basically look at what percentage of the populous is working in given industries. As our focus as become more and more technologically oriented, I think you will find a dramatic shift in the number of those who work in agriculture to those who work in technology. Now check legislative records relating to land use and ag
Good news for people who check out empty dorms (Score:2)
I went to a rich boy's high school and after school got out some of us poor kids checked out the "empty" lockers. We found portable teevees, video games, stuff like that.
I haven't lived in a dorm, but I'm sure people will leave behind laptops at the end of the semester.
Paper (Score:2)
Now consider how we get silicon, copper, aluminum and plastic, which go into the production of laptop computers. Also consider the sources of electricity used to power that computer.
I don't mean to imply that paper manufacturing is perfect. But the trees used to make paper are grown on farms. Maybe we should start making laptops out of wood too. But then they wouldn't weigh only four pounds, which would put a severe crimp i
Famous Lakeside Alumni (Score:2)
Wow (Score:2)
One key point: trees grow again, whereas the metals, plastics, and the materials to make those metals and plastics, do not. They're not a renewable resource.
They don't generally get recycled, either - they go to the dump, where they rust and leak toxins into the environment. Paper, on the other hand, will biodegrade in a couple hundred years in a landfill environment.
Environmental cost of production (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, semiconductor manufacturing uses lots of quite nasty chemicals and while the organics can be incinerated, the heavy metals are difficult to dispose of safely for the long term and there is always the inevitable discharge of toxic pollutants into the air or water surrounding the factory.
Finally, both manufacturing and operating computers use lots of electricity, which is usually generated by plants that produce lots of greenhouse gases.
Besides worrying about recycling, you also want to worry about all these environmental costs.
Is this really possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just calculating the environmental cost of a piece of paper appears insurmountable. Just how accurately (read, credibly) can this be done? What exactly is the environmental cost of a lumberjack taking a dump after hours? Since having paper requires a certain percentage of us be lumberjacks, we must consider the entire cost of having them. A truck used in hauling lumber has environmental effects across the entire planet; from fossil fuels to iron ore. Never mind that it probably has several computers on board and the whole calculation goes recursive (trucks making computers to make trucks...)
Now consider a laptop. Plastics, solder, various exotic bits like tantalum, manufacturing resources on multiple continents using a huge variety of techniques, transportation costs for all of the above... Here's a cost to consider; the environmental impact of supporting the guy who wrote the BIOS for the laptop, for that short period of his life that he did the work, and the time during which he was educated to do it. He most likely used a computer for that and once again we go recursive (computers making computers...) Just how far do you think you can take this?
Slashdot posted a story about the true cost of making a memory chip. Many posters were quick to point out that the water used in the process was recycled on the spot multiple times. The original story left the impression that the water was entirely consumed, but actually left the matter entirely ambiguous by not being clear about what the water figure actually meant. Naturally the suspicion is that the author intended to be ambiguous because it has more impact to say 'umpteen gallons per chip.' In the end the story assigned some dollar figure to the results and condemned modern technology as another great western destroyer of the environment.
How are environmental costs calculated? If I go strip mine an acre, presumably something somewhere much have incurred a cost. That spot of land? It's still there. Nothing is growing on it now, but it's still there. Eventually something will grow on it again. So are we to attempt to prorate a cost to that period of time between the moment the acre was last 'pristine' until the moment it once again represents something environmentally sound? Is there a price sheet somewhere we're working from?
At the very least admit the extreme ambiguity of any such endeavor. If you are concerned that acknowledging this would ruin some presupposed result, you really need to reconsider your motives. Too much of the research coming from the environmental movement reeks of junk science and is dismissed out of hand. You risk creating something that has the appearance of a result created to drum up outrage. If you want to influence my skeptical mind you need to be absolutely scrupulous in avoiding that. Just calculate. Don't even mention the word 'western.' Avoid ambiguity. Acknowledge this real limits of what can be known.
if your current pc is harmful to the environment (Score:2)
The size of the environoment. (Score:2)
Probably low impact (Score:2, Informative)
"The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists"
You can get it here:
http://www.ucsusa.org/publication.cfm?publicati o nI D=308
and read some reviews here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/06 09 80281X/104-4760810-4413531?vi=glance
For origination, nothing beats paper (Score:3)
-Go ahead, fold your laptop into a dart or a glider. Hey, just throw it. Please?
-Crayons, ink, watercolor, pencil, tempra, chalk all work well on paper, try it with a laptop, but don't insult us by calling it a "case mod". It would be interesting to hear a tape of the support call though. Be sure to put it on a M$ personal webserver directly on said laptop and link it to an "Ask slashdot" article. Thank you.
-One word....Origami!!
-Another victim....cursive/calligraphy. We will all write like doctors, dammit!
-Write and solve complex "anything" on a computer while you deny yourself the rich medium that lets you doodle, scribble, jot, or work on your limerics in the margins while still giving you the kind of dynamic outline capabilities of paper. My guess is that you'll suffer a kind of claustrophobia. I know I do. I can't even stand computer day-planners. They're a complete waste of time to everyone except the rigidly controlled. There's just too much chaos in my day-to-day, hour-to-hour world.
And comming soon..."Digital Ink"! It's short for "Another costly M$ Monopoly we will impale you on PC user--pay up and quit whining thieves!". Could you imagine having to purchase site licenses for a floor of tablet-pc's and then suffer the indignity of having to purchase "Refills"?!! (more primal screaming and breaking things)
There's also the cluelessness of computer use in the classroom. K12 Schools that want to present themsevles as being forward and progressive are actually just making the fat-cats fatter. What about all the infrastructure costs? You don't network for free with laptops...or anything. K12 should be about something other than the bored smart kids helping the bored kids fix their laptops or use M$ products...because after some buttmunch tweaks the registry you'd probably be lucky to have a character mapper or even notepad accessible on one of those things.
What about licensing fees for software?! Does "Ichman Highschool" suddenly transform into "The DELL-Ichman-Microsoft Campus" Screw the whole "highschool" thing, they're not _just_ a provider of k12 education.
"Students...Parents...Please take the scalpel provided and while holding your forearm over the bloodletting tray, gently press and slice with the tip, just enough to get a good stream of blood started..."
On the upside, it's certainly easier to catalog and archive every deviant word, every unpleasant thought, computer doodles and website deviltry and sell access to it to the highest bidder, like PINKERTON, or to a Corporate Human Enslavement department. I'm sure everyone here would just love to know that their employer would be reading about a crush they had, or what they did some weekend tweleve years ago when they foolishly submitted some journal assignment. Of course the alternative is to have really savvy kids with such an entrenched reflexive mendacity that they would never write anything personal. I've already seen this kind of behavior in colleges where nobody ever really writes what they're thinking except for the former home-coming queens and class valedictorians who truly want whirrled peas and work with children.
"Do k12 students really need access to computers at all for anything other than entertainment?" The answer is a resounding "No." Even NASA would prefer that they just "write up" experiments and then scan in just the illustratio
Costs (Score:2, Interesting)
I think everyone is assuming that the schools is doing this based on environmental factors (and maybe that is how it is being presented,) but I doubt that is actually the case. More likely they are looking at this from a cost savings standpoint for the school. If they can create a requirement in which the students
Give me the laptop! (Score:3, Funny)
College (Score:2)
Laptops for classtaking are retarded. True geniuses use video cameras with a good zoom.
Re:Am I normal? (Score:3, Funny)
You're asking people on /. if you're normal? That's your first problem right there.
How about telecommuting via the laptop? (Score:2)
The only environmental benefit of all these computers: Have the kids stay at home. No more burning fossil fuels.
Re:Throw out? (Score:2)
I know what you mean. I'm sure I'm not going to find a use for all those 386 and 486 motherboards, the roughly 128 MB of 1 Meg 32-pin SIMMs, and stacks of old Trident video cards that are sitting in boxes in the basement. Some how I just can't bring myself to chuck them, however...
Re:goodwill.... (Score:2)
Re:Don't worry (Score:2)