The Magical Online Rubbish Tip

Interesting article over on Living in a Toxic World about on-line software removing our need for old hardware and thus reducing electronic waste. Why buy Vista and Office when you get download a free OS and use Google Docs? Why store all your personal and business files locally when they can be securely stored and backed-up on-line, accessible 24/7? If you do away with the PC tower (sorry Mr Dell!) you immediately loose the manufacturing and transport pollution costs, as well as the associated waste problems.

Interesting theory, and I am certainly not knocking it, but we have had this kind of futuristic optimism before with other new tools, especially on-line tools. Amazon removing the need to go to the bookshop? Email removing the need for faxing or letter posting? MP3 players ridding the world of tapes, CD’s and vinyl? Sometimes the people need to interact with the product or service the same as they always have. Sometimes they actually prefer it. New technologies have always failed to do away with a lot of what we still use for these very reasons.

Will this trend continue? Absolutely. Its a normal everyday world reality

Question is, will it continue as a reality in the fight to rid our way of life of polluting economic addictions? Only if we let it. There is a basic difference of course. When the digital music revolution arrived, people weren’t necessarily looking for a way to rid themselves of CD’s or vinyl, and when the revolution came, they found ways they could still use the old technologies. But what if they had been?

The point being, if people are looking for a way to rid themselves of something, and then they find the ‘cure’, they will go for it. So lets talk again about values. If people truly valued the earth in their everyday lives then they would want to rid themselves of any personal possessions and practices that harmed the earth, the same way you wouldn’t leave rat poison lying around a house with curious toddlers.

So what would an on-line ‘cure’ look like? I have been working on a page for the Communities On-line section but its relevant here. The first question to ask is ‘what do people essentially need their PC for and how could that service be provided on-line?’ People have ’stuff’. They need a place to put that stuff that is easily accessible and interactive. They also need a way to carry around some of that stuff, interact with it and share it.

A simple re-read will tell you we already have all that technology on-line in this new digital era, but it is either inaccessible to the majority of people or people have other reasons for continuing to use the old technologies.

But lets say the technology becomes more and more accessible and available (iPhones for everyone!) and people learn to value the earth in a more practical way. What would the future on-line replacement for the PC look like? How much can we organise our lives on-line? What could that mean for the earth? And how can we make that happen?

They are actually quite exciting points and I will get to them later. Whats is important for me to say now is firstly that if and when blanket green technologies exist worldwide, people should value that effort, fight for its continuance and feel fulfilled because of that. Secondly, and this may be slightly off the point, no matter how many communities come together on-line or use on-line tools to communicate, if it all collapsed tomorrow, people should still have a place where they can make themselves heard, network, communicate, socialise and share ideas in an open democratic forum.

The Internet is teaching us everyday about how healthy democratic human communities thrive in this open forum environment. Even in its absence, this idea (or ideal) should remain. Where the hell did it go in the first place?