ACM TechNews

The Healing Power of Computers

BBC News (05/12/08)

Cambridge University professor Andy Hopper is leading a team of researchers at the Cambridge Computer Lab that will focus on ways computing technology can help maintain our current way of life and give more people access to the comfort, safety, and pleasures of technology while approaching the problem of building a sustainable and supportable economy with a focus on its environmental impact. The research effort, dubbed "Computing for the Future of the Planet," is examining whether digital alternatives to physical activities such as shopping really make a difference, and if the environmental cost of creating an iTunes economy is actually greater than the CD-based economy that preceded it. During a speech about such issues at the Royal Society, Hopper suggested that we should start placing server farms near renewable sources of energy, as it is a lot cheaper to transmit data than to transmit energy and the data networks are often already in place. Doing so would require making cloud computing an effective tool so processing tasks can be distributed over the network from desktop computers, laptops, and even mobile phones. Society also needs data centers that can cope with varying power supplies so server farms only use electricity that is locally generated. The Cambridge research could be seen as overly optimistic, writes Bill Thompson, but he says such research efforts, combined with small changes in our wasteful lifestyles, offer hope.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7396041.stm

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