My colleagues in the computer and telecommunications industry (ICT) do not seem to be engaging with the issue of climate change and energy reduction. To help them along I have organised a symposium at ANU on Friday on "Green ICT: Learning to be Sustainable with Computers and Broadband": http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=10

A great initiative, Tom. Hope you attract a good roll up of people and that they go away and implement some worthwhile energy-saving measures as a result.

i am on my 5 th computer [in 4 years]

now making them costs co2
so how about making computers LAST longer

so they arnt as susseptable to failure and uploading every virus ever invented.

learning to be sustainable is a joke

i bought my first consumable [an 8 mm film projecter [and a camera]

i then got a real to real to reel tape recorder [followed by a 8 track, followed by a phylips vidio player etc [then went beta [because it was better] then went vhs
then that changed through a progressive evolution into a variaty of disc's [cd hhd formats

,wont mention i pods and walk mans

thank god i never got the phone bug because the phones are a joke

now my latest purchase is as prone to planned obsolesance
as all the other junk i bought over my consumerism[life]

of course no one warned me about buying vista , that is going to be quickly made obsolete by windows 7 [apparently]but its cccrap 2

but as you nerds got a handle on it stop internet 2

and start FORCING the servers to serve

[not restrict my downloading by slowing it down ,and giving me 404 errors [censorship]

[as for getting the hd tv , digetal; and all the assosiated new age jargon spin and consumeristic bullcccrap etc

im over it

you want sustainability make the damm things able to be serviced

get standardised formats and stop going from one consumaBLE TO THE NEXT
[bring back analog phones [and record players] ,

you can jam the rest of it
[i want a refund on my vista]

Tom, I’m going to be rather critical. I think it is a good initiative, but something doesn’t add up.

Your key questions:

1. How can the ICT industry reduce its own carbon footprint?
2. How can use of ICT help reduce Australia's Carbon footprint?
3. What role could/should ICT Professionals play in reducing Australia's Carbon Footprint?

…are entirely concerned with climate change, whereas the symposium title and your thread title refers to sustainability. There is much more to sustainability than just our carbon footprint.

I notice that your session is specifically about energy efficiency in ICT. Dr Strazdin’s session is similar. Dr Middleton’s session is about broadband infrastructure and Dr Sulaiman’s talk is about ICT energy saving.

So, it all seems to be about the first question, and to a limited extent about the second question only inasmuch as the direct energy efficiency of computer systems goes, and not at all as to how computer technology and top-quality communications networks can help us reduce our carbon footprint in all sorts of other ways (or perhaps it is indirectly within Dr Middleton’s presentation).

I’d suggest that the actual reduction or efficient consumption of energy within the computer machinery constitutes only a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint issue and that it is FAR more important for this technology to make communication and the promotion of sustainability strategies as efficient as possible.

The second and third questions are much more important than the first.

The fourth question is much much more important again; how can the use of ICT help Australia, and the planet, achieve genuine sustainability, ie, the ultimate balance between all things human, our resource base and the natural environment…and do it quickly?

And the fourth question, or anything in the symposium related to it, is…well…absent!

interestingly tom it seems the green theme has gone global

[bbc reports one in london and a few in europe [
so your question is really hypothetic isnt it ]the post wasnt 'really' asking only publisising?]

seems the computer industry just adopted the green theme
[or as bbc put it big blue turns into the big green ,
how insulting

but the sheeple gobble it up
just the latest fad [image]

dont you guys know that the refills for your printers cost more than the printer cost new
[they used to be refillable ,and toner was toner ,

now each type has its special micron of toner IT ALONE uses, in its own cart-RAGE]

the computer marketing model is a great one for getting the new model in and using the media news as free blurb pr

[while the info in the old format dosnt work in the NEW format]

i noticed long ago that certain music wasnt put into the new format[i take that as a clear sign of censure ,either sell out or your music disappears?

[or if your a hippy we will kill your music [thus kill your mission]

any how i agree with q+a
it smells like a gimmic that sells to the media trying to give us a new tax ,
aided and abetted by those seeking to limit our web acces and killing our expensive [and carbon consuming playthings ,

even needing different power supply and special batteries [that strangly hold 4 hours new but soon fall's to 2 hours , then finding the right model replacement]

recall enron [who perfected the model]
the greed is cash flow theme
its rife in the conputer industry
but who knows [notices] right [certainly not the cattle]

Thank you once again, tomw, for alerting ordinary ICT users as to the drift of Federal government policy in the ICT area. Every OLO user has, whether they know it yet or not, a vested interest in this topic. At stake are issues that will affect the very ability to continue to be able to relatively FREELY electronically communicate as we presently can.

I am gaining a sense that governments, and behind them, large corporate interests, are taking the view that ICT has enabled the ordinary computer user too much: that when users at large wise up to the true potential of existing technology and software, let alone foreseeable developments therefrom, they will exercise too much independence of mind and usage discretion.

I have not yet read Sir Peter Gershon's report (downloadable as a PDF file from a link within the site to which tomw provided a link in his opening post), but from the summary in his covering letter I am getting the sense that centralization and all that goes with it is going to result in the bureaucratic tail becoming to wag the operational and functional usage ICT dog.

Ludwig's exposition of the three, but what should be four, questions that effectively define this ICT sustainability learning initiative you propose, achieved in the fourth post to this thread, is superb. One of the best posts I have ever seen on OLO. His fifth paragraph says it all.

Some background for OLO users:

This is the link to Tom Worthington's (userID tomw) earlier OLO article 'Digital education revolution is not sustainable' published on 6 October 2008: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7984&page=0 . (I tried to get to grips with what the Federal government's 'digital education revolution' of which Tom was somewhat critical, in detail proposed, but I encountered nothing but vagueness and confusing lack of hard detail.)

This is the link to the discussion 'Reducing computer greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2020' started by tomw on 22 september 2008: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2165&page=0

I wrote 11 November 2008 4:13:59 PM:

> symposium at ANU on Friday ...
> http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=10

Some responses to the comments:

"one under god" 8:59:16 PM:

> i am on my 5 th computer [in 4 years]

My laptops last two years of being carted on bicycles. The low cost Twinhead I bought February 2007 is going okay: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/02/new-notebook-computer.html

Also nettops look reasonably solid: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/10/aldi-netbook-computer.html

> uploading every virus ever invented.

Keep virus checkers up to date and use an email service which filters out viruses before they reach your computer.

> ... make the damm things able to be serviced

Yes. Also a heat glue gun fixes many computer problems. ;-)

>[i want a refund on my vista]

I didn't install Vista. Windows 7 might be okay, but I might switch to Linux instead.

Posted by Ludwig, 9:41:39 PM:

>Your key questions …are entirely concerned with climate change ...

Yes, but we have to start somewhere.

Posted by one under god, Wednesday, 12 November 2008 1:09:06 AM:

>seems the computer industry just adopted the green theme

There is "green-washing" in the ICT industry, but also people genuinely concerned.

Posted by Forrest Gumpp, 12 November 2008 8:32:48 AM:

>... governments ... taking the view that ICT has enabled
> the ordinary computer user too much ...

Not all in government are afraid of the Internet. The Finance Minister wants to do social networking: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/11/australian-government-20.html

> Sir Peter Gershon's report ... centralization ...

Yes, simply centralising everything doesn't make sense. The web can be used to centralise some functions and decentralise others.

>Ludwig's exposition ...

The hard part is actually doing it. Having been a less than successful technocrat in government, I have found education can achieve change. In teaching accessible web design, for example, I like to think I helped change the design of federal government web sites for the better: http://www.tomw.net.au/2008/wd/

In teaching Green ICT, I hope to change the way ICT is done. The draft course web site, using Australian Moodle software, is at:

http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=11

The my Blog postings on how this is being produced is at:

http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/11/e-learning-course-on-green-ict_09.html

Great,

I'll just fly in from Perth to see how I can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from my computer.

Sylvia.

Posted by Sylvia Else, Wednesday, 12 November 2008 3:31:00 PM:

>I'll just fly in from Perth to see how I can help reduce
>greenhouse gas emissions from my computer.

I have noticed a lot of events like that. I turn up at the convention centre by tram and folding bicycle <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2005/09/live-from-searcc-2005-in-sydney.html> and find everyone else took a taxi from the airport. ;-(

As far as I know no one is travelling from interstate to attend the event. We have one interstate presenter who is attending via the Internet. The overseas presenter happens to be in Australia anyway on other business.

Someone mentioned Linux.
I have Linux running on really old machines quite comfortably.

You do need 20Gbyte hard drives though. You can certainly use much
smaller hard drives so long as you don't want stacks of programs.
For word processors, email, web surfing three or four GByte works fine.
I certainly won't be chasing the upgraded m/cs needed for Vista.
Think of all the co2 saved by not upgrading computers.

You can use the power management to shut things down after no activity.

When you see the shutdown air conditioning and the whole telephone
exchange in one corner of one floor think about how much power they
are now saving.
The real question is how long will the internet keep running during
energy power down ? I think it will graduaqlly become unreliable.

Ludwig; “Your key questions …are entirely concerned with climate change ...”

Tomw; “Yes, but we have to start somewhere.”

But is it a start? Do you intend to take it further? Are you or any of your colleagues going to run another symposium to follow this one up, in which you explore my all-important fourth question?

My guess would be; no, not at all.

Don’t you think that at this point in time we should be along way past the ‘start’ and getting well and truly stuck into the big components of overall sustainability?

Are you going to lobby for your university or your government to get an urgent move-on in addressing the big picture….or are you operating completely in isolation and just assuming that you are doing your little bit for the common good, without even attempting to really tie it in to the holistic view?

Having witnessed the latter hundreds of times, I suspect it is the case here too.

“Ludwig's exposition ...

The hard part is actually doing it.”

I presume you are referring to ‘doing’ real sustainability Tom?

Well it sure would help if it was on the agenda in the first place!

Sure, education and improved web design can achieve change. But we need to promote the sort of change that we want it to achieve. It could easily be used for the wrong purposes. For example; to promote the interests of big business and free market ideology as opposed to limits to human expansion and better wealth distribution and thus be used to take us even more rapidly away from a sustainable and equitable world.

'Technocrats' can't just assume that their changes will be for the better. We've all got to work solidly to make sure they are.

yeah tom [i tried keeping the updates with my first two computers]
virus are planted via the backdoors windows installs just to keep its control over its users ,

its just that most users remain ignorant in just how exposed they are to snooppers in real time ,as well as that saved in the digestised format [built in obsolesance
#
i noted you only bothered to reply the fluff issues and chose to side step the relitive comment's ,which is a typical short cut ,that gives the appearance of but is not a fulsome response

,it is futile listing them again as you will just dance arround the real issues with some flippant reply

enron was the first to limit the web stream
[reportedly]with stream restriction ,that now has flowed through into real time monitoring ,and a rewal inside trading based on our web searches

searches that supposedly get 3 million results
[but we are allowed to acces only 1000][or less than 100 pages of it

because some computer teq has prioritised even the search to acces only those favoured 1000

but the model isnt sustainable ,nor fair [and deliberatly made more useless[it would be so easy to have us weight the search results for you ,that rates the contents [multiple contents the search schoses to reply

but go ahead prove how clever you are by picking on selective words
just like your words search

[this gross proffiteering while stealing our origonal content is a thing that in time will see the web killed off as it dosnt represent true worth of this 'ser-vice'

in time it will be revaealed that micro soft is the equivelent of a virus stealing others ideas with omnipotant oppressive powers ,
#
# able to limit free speech at will
with the us the user monkeys using it only able to spell check their way through it by hitting the right buttons ,they [we] are able to acces only by debit card and its selective monopoly

Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 12 November 2008 4:52:33 PM:

>Are you or any of your colleagues going to run another
>symposium to follow this one up, in which you explore
>my all-important fourth question?

The next symposium is being planned for February or March 2009. As to what questions will be addressed will need to be decided by the organisers. I suspect we will stick to business issues as that is what the audience is going to want to hear about. If we address topics they are not interested in, then they will not attend.

>Don’t you think that at this point in time we should be along
>way past the ‘start’ and getting well and truly stuck into
>the big components of overall sustainability?

Yes, but we can only start from where we are, not from where we wish we were. My fellow professionals already see me as some sort of crank for raising energy saving issues. It will do no good raising other issues as they will simply dismiss this as irrelevant to their business goals.

>Are you going to lobby for your university or your government
>to get an urgent move-on in addressing the big picture…

I have been lobbying my university and my government. You can check my efforts with a web search: http://www.google.com.au/search?q="tom+worthington"+"sustainability"+-fish+ict+

> ... to promote the interests of big business and free market
>ideology as opposed to limits to human expansion and better
> wealth distribution ...

My aim is not to try to change the economic or political system, but to make changes within the system.

>'Technocrats' can't just assume that their changes will be
>for the better. We've all got to work solidly to make sure they are.

Yes, as a technocrat I will always tend to see techncial solutions to problems. Others need to keep reminding us there is a larger world out there. Perhaps you would like to post details to the forum of how you have been addressing these issues.

Thanks for the well-considered response Tom.

“Perhaps you would like to post details to the forum of how you have been addressing these issues.”

I have done this before on OLO. But here is the essence of it again [it is just about impossible to find a particular post way back in the annals of one’s user index! /:> | ]

I’ve been lobbying on sustainability issues for 20 years through the following avenues:

Past president and long-time committee member of three non-government organisations; the North Queensland Conservation Council, Sustainable Population Australia (NQ branch) and the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (Townsville Branch).

Former avid letter-writer and occasional article-writer to my local newspaper and rural, state and national papers. Many articles in the NGO newsletters and presentations delivered all over the place.

I’m a botanist, ecologist and geomorphologist, working for the same employer for 20 years, and a professional associate of James Cook University.

Producer and presenter of an environmental radio program for about three years.

Ran in the 1995 state election for the Qld Greens.

Three years on OLO.

I’ve had a fair old go at it, to the point of obsession…and at times, depression.

continued

“The next symposium is being planned for February or March 2009.”

Excellent.

“As to what questions will be addressed will need to be decided by the organisers. I suspect we will stick to business issues as that is what the audience is going to want to hear about. If we address topics they are not interested in, then they will not attend.”

But you need to address the things that really matter. You can’t just leave them out altogether because you feel that people might not want to hear them. Work them into the program. My fourth question was just the fourth part of what should be presented at the forum tomorrow. It doesn’t have to dominate the whole forum.

You’ve got to get the big picture into peoples’ heads. I don’t believe that you should just be leaving it up to someone else, in government or wherever, to tie your bit of the sustainability effort or that of your colleagues into the holistic view.

“I have been lobbying my university and my government.”

Great. But from what I can tell, it seems to be with much the same narrow focus as with the symposium.

“Others need to keep reminding us there is a larger world out there.”

Why should others have to remind you? Shouldn’t everyone who is in anyway concerned with the achievement of sustainability already well and truly know about the big picture and about the really big issues?

If they were sincere about their sustainability effort, wouldn’t they want to be involved with these big issues…the things that threaten to reduce the effectiveness of their work, or cancel it out or completely overwhelm it…or use it for purposes opposite to the intended use?

Thanks to the Online Opinion-ites for the comments and suggestions. Text, slides and a video of presentation from the Green ICT Symposium 2008 at ANU, are available online: http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=10

* Welcome and Introduction By Senator Kate Lundy
* Setting up a data centre in regional Australia: Video of Mach Technology, Noosa
* Dr Peter Strazdins, ANU. How much energy can you save with a multicore computer for web applications?
* Catherine Middleton, Associate Professor, Ryerson University, Are Users Up to Speed? The Demand Side of Sustainable Broadband
* Dr. Idris F. Sulaiman, CEO, Computers Off Australia.

My "Teaching Sustainable ICT to Professionals Online" was cancelled and will be rescheduled in the ANU seminar series. Or you can hear me at the Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT, 26 November 2008, University of Melbourne: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/ict_sustainability_education/

A second Green ICT Symposium is planned for early 2009. To be on the list for details, contact: Rachel.Allen@aph.gov.au

Thank you, tomw, for the follow-up post re the Green ICT Symposium.

Reading the Gershon Report, to which you provided a link, I came across this gem:

"1.7.10. The Treasury reported that it had invested in a new data centre with a conscious effort to reduce its carbon footprint by re-using the cold air in Canberra for the centre’s cooling requirements."

So little cold air in Canberra that they have to 're-use' it, apparently.

I note in your opening post your use of the words "energy reduction" in relation to the 'climate change' buzzwords. Is this meant to mean 'energy descent', an envisaged general situation of reducing availability of energy of the kind required to power computers and broadband access among other things, or simply 'demand management' in ICT, a planned reduction in power requirements?

A desirable characteristic of power supply in the ICT context is its reliability or, preferably, uninterruptibility. I see a motivational opportunity for providing focus for a move to sustainable electricity sourcing in this connection. For that part of ICT energy demand represented by the home, home office, or small commercial user, I suggest encouraging the development and marketing of stand-alone renewables-based generating and storage equipment. Stand-alone renewables-based generating capability can easily amount to much the same thing as an uninterrupted power supply.

Distributed renewables-based electricity generation adequate for all domestic power requirements may not be feasible, but smaller capacity capable of handling ICT requirements is in my opinion much more immediately attainable. Its introduction would be a valuable educational experience.

Once a renewables-based power supply is being used, the efficiency of the equipment using this power becomes very much a distant secondary consideration. Re-use of existing hardware, already possible through the tempobidirectional characteristics of open source software, will then become the principal avenue by which these users can continue to improve the sustainability of ICT.

If there is to be 'energy descent', ICT surely should be one of the highest priority areas to which we should be providing sustainibility of energy supply.

Forrest

Quick note to let you know that I have done my bit for recycling old PC's and made the move to Ubuntu.

ATM running both windows and ubuntu till I get around to transfering what I need and then its bye bye Mr Gates.

Everything running very well and much faster.

Cheers

Fractelle:

"Everything running very well and much faster."

You have no idea how I envy your brevity of written expression. That's right up there with "Emden beached and done for". Signally significant. No wonder you had to depart from the world of 'Yes, Minister'.

My qantum of solace.

Ubuntu 2 U2.

Forrest