Here is a link to an interesting little talk from a guy at Nesta called Roland Harwood. He talks about forms of consumption that aren’t about production. It’s true that if we live on thin air then we might not use up resources. But mobile and broadband IT are used to sell us more and use more, more of the time. I don’t know if IT lessens or increases carbon emission. Do we buy more although the transactions are weightless? As ever the issue is not just the quantity of carbon emissions but the quality of our lives. Weightless consumption is better than heavyweight shopping but we still don’t break the addiction.
As a side issue Roland talks about his Dads record collection (didn’t his Mum listen to music) starting in 1965 and ending in 1972. My parents were the same – just a bit earlier. Lots of Frank Sinatra and Burt Bacharach and then nothing. Its like the disappearance of the Dinosaurs. Im 46 and have two grown up boys and I still buy CDs and download files. But then I live in a turbo-consuming world and they didn’t.
aren’t we missing the point about the massive amounts of energy required to create the infrastructure for these supposed ‘weightless transactions’. server farms dont run on air, then there’s all those batteries being recharged to power all these laptops/handhelds. Add to that the production and dubious disposal of these items that most people seem to feel obliged to upgrade every 18 months or so. and I haven’t even mentioned the transportaion/delivery of said weightless transactions. consuming is consuming …
I agree skinner; I was trying to sound reasonable and thats whats happens because saying consuming is consuming all the time just gets you dsimssed asa lunatic – and yet your right it is
Hey – I just stumbled across this blog post whilst vanity surfing! Thanks. 3 things:
a) stuff tends to get commoditised in a way that relationships/services just don’t
b) yes, server farms require lots of energy but i wasn’t just talking about online/freemium business models
c) yes my mum listened to music too but ws less into it than my dad. what happened in 1972 was they started having kids which seems to have had a similar impact om my music purchasing too. no reason why we can’t consume music into our old age.
Thanks again anyway.
Cheers,
Roland
if you do any more vanity surfing you’ll find I said thanks for the comment Roland. Glad you mum got in on th act. My worry is that my music is too much like my kids – where is the rebellion today or why do I want sound rebellious?