Paper, bits, and re:sources
Let’s take a look at the daily newspaper. Getting the newspaper and its content delivered to my front stoop (which I don’t do anymore) requires that a whole army be mobilized. Reporters and editors love to travel, love their phones, and love their computers. For somewhere like the New York Times, you have hundreds of people, world-wide, working around the clock, to generate that content that you want to consume. And, don’t forget printing all that paper. Paper has to be made either from raw trees cut down and brought to mills, or pulp has to be repurposed, re-bleached, and pressed out again. And then, we have to move all those the trucks either to bring the trees and papers in, or to get all that newsprint out. Not just the newsstand on Main Street, but, also to your doorstep.
OK – lots of paper could be problematic, so, how about, instead, moving one piece of paper? Sending a love note to my wife no longer requires a Pony express rider to risk his life while crossing the Rockies and avoiding battling bandits. In the more modern sense, it doesn’t require the US government to purchase as much as 123 million gallons of fuel to power a fleet of vehicles (like it had to in 2006 for the US Postal Service). Nor does it take UPS doing a huge study on how their drivers should only take right hand turns to save fuel and not spend gas idling while waiting for the green light to take a left. Now, it just takes me whipping out my phone, typing out a message, and whoosh – it’s away. But, where those horses are gone, they have been replaced with rooms of routers (at this instant, something like 18 between me and the Google server that holds her mail – one of which is over a wireless hop between my plane and some tower that I’m flying over in Nevada). And, of course, what goes into a datacenter? You can't forget all the computers and hard drives that are continuously sucking electricity in those numerous air-conditioned rooms. (All this technology goes to waste, however, as she would probably more appreciate a hand written note over some words rendered in Arial in her web browser anyway).
