Adam Manning
Sat, 4 March 2023
Cloud is the term used for remote storage of images, files and other stuff in this digital age.
Highlighting the needy, with Anthony Bernard.
Every smartphone is connected to its cloud, just as midges follow scotsmen in summer. Maybe it is an acronym, CLOUD - Calamitous Load Of Unexpected Doom? Enormous amounts of energy are required to keep all this information instantly available, with lots of cooling because energy generates heat. We are all fooled into believing smartphones and computers have no carbon footprint, but in reality they seriously add to global warming.
Software in new computers and smartphones monitor everything we explore on line. Users have their interests categorised and are then fed further information to support their original thinking and reinforce their perceptions, however ill advised. News will be skewed towards preferred items, advertisers will be alerted to further opportunities to sell them gambling, pizzas, funeral services or anything.
Ireland has 20% of its electricity taken up feeding clouds of "data hubs", helped by Irish tax laws encouraging international operators to be based there while serving customers in other countries. Lots or water is needed to cool electronics. Water shortages in the London area last summer were exacerbated by cooling data hubs in Slough with water from the Thames. Don't worry, this column is typed on a 1999 iBook, made before all this clever stuff, with its own memory, not using clouds, just coffee for the operator!
"Influencer" is the term for a regular user whose contributions are widely read; recently a major promoter of macho violence has been in the news after being arrested. Years ago, in the playground, such self promotors might be surrounded by ardent admirers who became a gang, available to follow the leader. Vlad Putin's schooldays could be revealing, maybe some of his school chums are now oligarchs!
Nowadays, with social media, a crowd can be gathered to follow a particular policy, theme or whim; "dislikes" cause people to be excluded from the group. Nowhere is there a better nor sadder example than the furore around poor Nicola Bulley's disappearance. In the three weeks while she was missing, before her body was found, maybe a hundred other people would have gone missing according to average statistics. Most would have been found unharmed, but some would have had an unhappy outcome mixed up with drugs, alcohol, gambling or mental health. Maybe a thousand police officers were doing their best, mainly getting it right. None of these were in the news; the only story was Nicola Bulley.
Reports tell that every day someone commits suicide as a result of gambling, which is a catastrophe for their family and friends but passes unnoticed by the rest of us.l
Massive and easy data storage facilitate social media frenzies on particular issues, to the exclusion of balanced news. This adds to global warming and places a significant burden on electricity and cooling water. We all assume that the internet does not cost anything, but we all pay through our mobile phone and wifi charges and suffer the effects of climate change.
Social media does open up communications, but software is skewing how messages are handled, gathering like minded thinkers together. This makes it a haven for activists to shout louder than the fair minded majority.
We should avoid being confused or caught up in these trends. Global warming remains an issue; cattle exhale methane; data hub clouds are worse
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