"Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta combined more than doubled their energy consumption between 2017 and 2021."
And they will double their energy and water and material demand again by 2026.
Is anyone anywhere in government paying the least bit of attention to the environmental catastrophe that Big Tech is massively accelerating? Or have all our politicians been bought off by Big Tech?
@gerrymcgovern I figured this would happen. Big tech, keeps wasting energy, bloating the web for who knows what... bloating the web and AI was bound to increase the environmental issues. Thus creating more pollution, and making people stupider in the process. I don't think the internet alone is making people dumb enough that they believe fascism is a solution for anything. I think the pollution is also an equally bad if not worse factor.
@frostchild@gerrymcgovern Just out of curiosity, about how much energy would Mastodon use with is thousands of decentralized servers use (vs a big corporation service of similar size)? it seems to me no matter where we are on the Internet, we're consuming resources related to it.
Sorry, I don't mean to ruffle any feathers -- it was just a random thought while reading the comments here.
@AskPippa@frostchild
I think that's a great point, and something well worth investigating. In the energy universe, text-based systems have the least energy demand. Phone texting seems to have the lowest communication energy demand.
@gerrymcgovern@AskPippa The ironic, thing, I am not even a scientist but there was a problem like this that led to me thinking that pollution is making people stupider... ironically, it is lead. So I made a pun just now... :P
@frostchild@gerrymcgovern Yeah, especially back in the days when lead was added to gasoline and the cars spewed lead-laced vapours into the air. Then there was an issue with lead in vinyl blinds before the 1990s.
And lead pipes carrying city water (though minerals end up building up on the inside walls of the pipes and block the lead from leaching out).
Pre-1900s, lead was often added to cosmetics and some cure-all tonics (it apparently added a sweet flavor and probably complement the mercury and aercenic!).
Oh, and the fall of the Roman empire was partly attributed to lead toxicity. Yes, lead led to many problems. (I always appreciate word play and puns) :)
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