[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'C')ompare the energy cost of all of that communications hardware, to the energy cost of all of the physical transportation it has replaced.

In my own industry: a PBX that provides telecommuter services for about 100 employees uses less than 350 KWH/year, and replaces up to 24,000 round-trip automobile commutes per year.

Case closed.

[SchroedingersCat]

People can communicate quite well without computers. It's called face-to-face communication. Try it some time. It's a great prep for the post-PO world. Before the Internet we had these things called telephones. They allowed people to talk to each other at a distance. We also had something called mail. Not e-mail and texting and IM. Real mail. People sent pieces of paper to each other via a third party. Oh, and for talking with people instantaneously across great distances we had something called radio. /sarcasm off
Computers have accelerated the rate of the creation of hallucinated wealth and all the various derivatives whose crash will likely take out the world's economy.
Computers have accelerated the rate that we can extract raw materials and convert them into finished products.
Computers have accelerated the rate that we convert fossil fuels into CO2.
Kids today are being taught keyboarding instead of writing. Seems like nobody knows how to spell without a spell checker.
Computers have given mankind a false sense of mastery of information the way that fossil fuels have given us a false sense of endless energy.
I'm not saying computers and I.T. are evil. I'm saying that they are part and parcel of the endless-growth illusion and need to go away.

[SchroedingersCat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', 'I') am an I.T. professional going back to those days of the 1980's. I've seen the progress in technology and what it has done. I never thought I'd become a Luddite but I'm starting to lean that way.
With apologies to Shakespeare, the first thing we do let's kill all the computers.

[SevenTen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'A')ny highly-evolved tool has a high level of embodied information. This is true even of hand tools with no moving parts, and even of simple objects such as forks and knives. Complexity is an entirely separate axis of measurement. And for what it's worth, any decent industrial designer always strives for greatest degree of simplicity, on the basis that unnecessary complexity is unnecessary cost.

[simontay78]

let's debate calmly guys!
Internet allows you to learn skills that you never ever be able to learn in schools (locally)...
Internet allows you to network with millions of forum viewers...well maybe a few hundreds..haa
Servers soon will be very energy efficient....heard a new 80KWh version coming out..not confirm...have to check.
If the world suddenly throw the computer away...think of the extra OIL that will be consume to get the job done.
1. Send a snail mail via post (extra load means extra truck full) This will means more trips to transport these mails...means more oil used...not to mention slow...lol
2. To get a tool for your farm...or crops...you need to travel to the city...and travel back...instead of ordering it online and sent via DHL or Fedex that travel for many other customers at the same area.
3. To learn how to farm, grow crops and livestocks... you need to go to buy a book...far away places..that traveling is again required.
Telephone is great...but costly for rural area to setup and maintained...and the toll charges are incredible compared to Skype 2.0 Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) internet phones that will be FREE if connect to another computer...and lower toll charges to connect to a phone direct.
Laptop do not use much power actually and a simple 40W solar panel on a sunny day can store enough electricity in a sealed battery to charge a laptop for a few hours!
Computer can be a entertainment center for people in the future as well as jobs...we cannot possibly understand what that will mean for a peak oiler in the depressing future....
The cheapest way to solve the problems or complete a job will always prevails in the end... it's individual choice to do their preparation for peak oil....no argument there!
it's your own choice and I am sticking to my computer!

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'C')oncerned, you entirely misread my posting.
It's not 24,000 people. Not one of them is fired. All they do is to switch from driving to the office to telecommuting.
It's 100 people. When all of them drive to work each day, their total driving adds up to 24,000 round-trips by automobile each year. When all of them telecommute, they do zero round-trips to and from the office each year. 24,000 round-trips are saved, and the PBX that handles the telephone aspect of the telecommuting consumes at most about 350 KWH per year.
The same 100 people. One hundred cars making a total of 24,000 round trips each year, or one telephone switch using less then 350 KWH per year which is about as much as one high-efficiency residential refrigerator.

[Omnitir]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', 'P')eople can communicate quite well without computers. It's called face-to-face communication. Try it some time. It's a great prep for the post-PO world. Before the Internet we had these things called telephones. They allowed people to talk to each other at a distance. We also had something called mail. Not e-mail and texting and IM. Real mail. People sent pieces of paper to each other via a third party. Oh, and for talking with people instantaneously across great distances we had something called radio. /sarcasm off

[Pops]

Ditto everything Simon and gg3 said, the internet is how we found our farm 1,500 miles distant, how I learned how to do many things I now do to lower my consumption, how I make a (small) living without using a drop of gasoline, get various takes on current events so hopefully less bias and yes how I waste time like right now.
Juat a small (or not) example; 20 years ago the printing industry used lots of nasty chemicals and probably produced 5 times as much refuse before one page was printed compared with modern direct-to-plate technology because of computers.
Seems like a good thing.
I’ve been telecommuting (graphic design) for about five years now and you don’t need wifi broadband – I am on a dial-up at 24k right now and that’s about all I can count on here in the sticks.
So, at least for me, the path to a lower energy using lifestyle has been to a great extent enabled by computers and the internet.

[SevenTen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zensui', '.')..I was going to say that. Videoconferencing replacing meetings in other parts of the globe, etc...

[Pops]

I just read the latest issue of our rural electrical coop newsletter. In it was an article about how folks in the sticks back in the 30s and 40s had their houses wired for power and telephone before those services were even close to their local.

Power of course facilitated more widespread indoor plumbing and sanitation, safer light and heat (after a learning curve still going on with some of my neighbors), and a huge reduction in physical labor.

The phone was quite a gift for those separated by distance – still is; we are in MO.US, one offspring is in Hawaii, one doing drug interdiction waay down south and one close-in-law is overseas. It worked for a long while it appears on electromechanical switches (don’t know nothing about this so I stand to be corrected).

The internet of course is but a babe in its evolution in comparison to those two technologies but I daresay it has had at least as profound an effect and still a while to evolve both toward complexity and then back to simplicity before PO.com goes dark.

So videoconferencing in 30 years; maybe not…

But dialing in to something similar to a BBS or CompuServe at 14.4k or less as I did in the 80s, yea, probably.

Just because things in an ever cheaper energy environment become ever more complex doesn’t mean the lessons learned in that environment cannot be adapted to become simpler in an ever more expensive energy environment.

Course I have been wrong before…

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'B')ut dialing in to something similar to a BBS or CompuServe at 14.4k or less as I did in the 80s, yea, probably.

[killJOY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nternet allows you to learn skills that you never ever be able to learn in schools (locally)...
Internet allows you to network with millions of forum viewers...well maybe a few hundreds..haa

[Pops]

Yea all the books shoved at me by school boards 40 years ago were certainly the gospel.

And of course your selections of reading material are completely without bias.

Damned freedom of speech!

And of judgment.

[SchroedingersCat]

I.T. helps corporations to be more efficient. Corporations don't give a rat's behind about saving energy -- only saving money. Video conferencing won't help mankind in any possible way. Telecommuting won't either. I.T. allows corporations to continue turning irreplaceable resources into unnecessary crap when the shortage of energy should have shut them down.

I.T. is the equivalent of fossil-fuel based fertilizer. The availability of cheap computers is the equivalent of the green revolution in agriculture. Modern business is artificially supported by the computer. Like artificial fertilizer, it has allowed big business to deplete resources at an ever-increasing rate without regard to the externalities.

Without artificial fertilizer factory farming is dead. We will need to return to smaller, more Earth-friendly farms. If we remove I.T. from business, the same thing will happen to the big corporations.

------------
"The good Earth -- we could have saved it but we were too cheap and lazy." --Kurt Vonnegut

[Joe0Bloggs]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Omnitir', 'Y')es, IT makes us more productive. As do all technologies.
But were do you draw the line? I mean why just target one of the latest technologies? What about, say, the Ford production line and Taylorism? This model greatly raised production capabilities and increased consumption, so would we be better off without such mass production? Or what about the printing press? This revolutionary information technology allowed for far greater dissemination of information then ever before and resulted in a great increase in productivity, resulting in further consumption. Is the printing press included in the target for the death of IT? It was after all one of the key factors that motivated Ned Ludd to start his movement that seems to be growing dangerously stronger today.
But wait, why stop with even early information technologies? What about the first IT, human vocal communication? It was because of this early communication technology that we gained the ability to hunt animals in ever greater numbers, eventually forcing us to adopt early agricultural techniques which rapidly spread thanks to our advanced communication technology (speech). But why stop there, as it was the discovery of controlling fire, possibly the first ever technology, that allowed as to work in the dark, to herd animals, and to cook meat allowing for easier digestion, all of which raised our productivity and allowed for greater consumption of resources.
So where exactly do you anti-technology people draw the line? If you think that a modern technology should not exist because of the increased productivity it gives us, then why don’t you apply this logic to all technology? Why do you think it’s any better to have a printing press, or to have the ability to speak, then it is to have modern IT? After all, they increased our productivity over their previous periods just as much as IT did.
Face it, we are either dumb animals with no control whatsoever over the natural environment, or we are racing towards ever more sophisticated technologies to manipulate the universe around us. You can’t pick a middle ground. We can’t go back to an earlier age and stay there sustainably for any length of time. We are either going forwards, or going extinct.
A position against IT, against any technology, is actually an argument for our species to be extinct.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('killJOY', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nternet allows you to learn skills that you never ever be able to learn in schools (locally)...
Internet allows you to network with millions of forum viewers...well maybe a few hundreds..haa

[Denny]

If you look at the U.S. postal service stats, they have seen some decline in per capita volume which is due to the displacment to e-transactions of all types. For sure that is an energy saver. Less weight to truck, less paper produced, less printing energy, and a some less postal and printing employees having to commute each day to and from work.

I would not be surprised to see in my grandhildren's era that they will learn in amazement in their history class that at one time in America hundreds of thsoudands of people were employed to move bits of paper door to door. PAoper which was then mostly tossed away.

[Ender]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', ' ')let's kill all the computers.

[SchroedingersCat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ender', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SchroedingersCat', ' ')let's kill all the computers.