Hear hear, Frankie, commendably clear thinking. "Globalisation" (or in one of the true spirits of the word, "globalization") has a couple of rather distinct meanings, and conflating the economic meaning and the "democratisation of information and communication" meaning is sure to generate some internal inconsistency. I recognise, though, that there's overlap between the two, since as information spreads some cultures come off better than others, and the "cultural colonialism" charge becomes entangled with the economic colonialism charge.
As I write, James' thoughts on this arrive in my inbox, but whilst I see the overlap I still think it's confusing to treat the globalisation of information and that of industry as one and the same. It's the globalisation of communication we're really talking about (as Frankie notes); that is, the globalisation of the availability of information, which just makes it a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to access information. The nature of this content is actually irrelevant to its global accessibility, and lots of stuff that is globally accessible is only locally relevant.
Globalisation aside, I still see two distinct strands within this "greener internet" thread, both fascinating: one concerned with real-world sustainability, the other with digital sustainability. Like with the multiple meanings (or facets) of globalisation, there is some overlap - yes, energy is involved in hosting and serving web resources so we should think about whether we want to keep all of them - but for my own sanity I'm not going to treat them as the same.
On the "green" side i.e. the sustainability of the real-world in which our bits sit (pardon the phrase), I don't think there's really any question that there is a cost to anything we do and there must be ways to improve, whether in terms of the manufacture and lifecycle of hardware we choose, or the energy required to provide services on that hardware. Nick points out that it's still dirt cheap to run a basic site, though, and since we can safely assume that our £6.99 is going to cover all of the energy required for hosting it, it's less environmentally costly to run a basic web site than a museum. Others (including me, Paul and Peter) wonder whether the potential carbon savings from "lost" museum visits (or other physical activities) might actually count in favour of our web sites.
On the digital sustainability side, with Jon I think that the long tail is a perfectly good reason for keeping a lot of our stuff, and with Tehmina I feel that there's space for us to develop an approach to archiving it. Some of that work has been done - research into collecting policies for digital preservation projects, for example, or UKWAC's approach to accession. Tehmins is right, anyway: we could do with an open discussion on the value (current and future) of what we are responsible for, and on how we can convert that value into a plan of action, whether that be repurposing, archiving or dumping the asset.
Nick is concerned that ghost sites are costing us in one way or another. I'm not too worried: they may suck a little attention but that tails off, and in terms of the green question, they only cost much energy when someone's looking at them - a hard disc lying at idle isn't a great worry. He's right that we can't really put a value on our old or new stuff very well, which interferes with our decisions on what to make and how to support it/how long for. This isn't the place to decide whether the free market is a Good Thing or not, but two phrases strike me as important and probably show where I'm coming from: "public good" and "tragedy of the commons". I'm not sure that the free market has evolved to address these yet. Nick, I could be tempted to take you up on the loaded use of "artificial" to describe the factors operating on the free market you imagine - that market is artificial in itself, as in, it is an artifact of people, just like subsidies, taxes, fashion, boredom and all the rest of it. You simply mean "factors other than supply or demand", but the public good IS a form of demand, albeit one that simply cannot be fulfilled in the way that the so-called free market operates - that's a limitation of the market. Clearly I'm not an economist and my thoughts on the matter deserve to be widely ignored, but equally clearly there's a general feeling in much of society that there is such a thing as the public good and that certain things need to be handled by governments and outside the market, so railing about their deforming effect on the market is not necessarily an argument-clincher (and of course you recognise this e.g. "we technically operate our services as a peculiar hybrid of a free market and a controlled market, largely due to the non-statutory but public-service nature of our industry")
That's all. At ease.
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
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www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Roberto Frankie
Sent: 15 February 2007 12:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MCG] A greener internet?
> Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but does anyone have a view
> of the way that the internet contributes to globalisation? Arguably,
> the web is the most 'global' media.
>
> Generally globalisation is perceived as an anti-green phenomenon? Is
> it in this case?
The 'globalisation' referred to by the political left-wing is the globalisation of trade and business, which consequently allows for the concentration of power and money within smaller numbers of large, international corporations, who become increasingly less controllable by any individual nation-state, and who are naturally less concerned with environmental sustainability.
The globalisation alluded to above, by contrast, refers to the globalisation of information and communication which is enabled by the global internet. Arguably this is the most tool available which can be used to rally against the negative effects of globalisation, although clearly it can be used by those on both sides of the debate
...
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