The Computer Age and Its Carbon Footprint
There is a sleek quality to so much modern technology, and that may make it hard to imagine its polluting potential. But think about it: Many of us in the developed world plug and unplug our cellphones, music players, printers and laptops from wall sockets several times a day. It turns out that these goods are responsible for a significant amount of the electricity that we use in homes and offices.
Behind these consumer products is the wider information and communications technology industry. To keep humming, this industry relies on vast volumes of powerful semiconductors and communications towers. The ICT industry also relies on vast data centers located at heavily protected and air conditioned sites across the globe.
A report released this week by the European Social Investment Forum, a Paris-based group that promotes sustainability in business, says the sector is responsible for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions — or about as much as from air transport.
That reinforces the views put forth in a report in The Economist early this month that emissions from data-centers and services over the Internet will have grown four-fold by 2020 making its carbon footprint even larger than that of aviation by some estimates.
The issue of growing emissions from the sector is an important one for banks that invest in high-growth technology companies, which might face added costs in the future because of regulations on carbon emissions and energy use. In its contribution to the Eurosif report, West LB, a German bank, said that the emissions from the industry created “a situation we consider to be unsustainable.”
West LB also said that the industry had managed to build up a “clean, non-polluting image that appeared to be free of environmental risks.” Only now was it “becoming clear that the sector’s footprint is significant.”
How many other industries are promoting a clean image that, on more critical examination, make a significant contribution to growth in energy use? And what more can be done to push them to account fully for their carbon footprints?
Source : The New York Times , written by james Kanter http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/the-computer-age-and-its-carbon-footprint
- Technology Incubator to Focus on India's Needs
BANGALORE, India, June 3— For a country with $7 billion of software exports and a huge talent pool of technical workers, India has been a spectacular underperformer in inventing and creating technology that addresses domestic needs.
That may explain why the government has approved the $1.09 billion Media Lab Asia project, a collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and India's information technology ministry. The goal is to create technologies to benefit India's masses.
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'It is just not enough for India to show a 45 percent annual growth in software exports,'' said Pramod Mahajan, India's information technology minister. ''We have to now harness our technical skill base to develop ideas to benefit India's billion-plus population.''
Once ready, the Indian version of the M.I.T. Media Lab, a technology incubator in Cambridge, Mass., is expected to be larger than the original. The expansion into Asia follows the opening of another Media Lab last year in Dublin.
Media Lab Asia will promote a decentralized, project-based approach to research, said Walter Bender, executive director of the M.I.T. Media Lab. ''Projects will be designed to change people's lives using innovative and enabling technologies that can touch all of India,'' Mr. Bender said.
India, with a population of one billion, a dozen official languages and hundreds of regional dialects, has a yawning digital divide. There are fewer than five computers for every 1,000 people.
The lab, to be based outside Bombay with a string of regional laboratories, will receive a fifth of its financing from the Indian government. The rest is expected to come from corporate sponsors contacted by the government and the M.I.T. Media Lab.
Media Lab Asia will emphasize products that deliver the benefits of information, communication and technology to India's rural dwellers, Mr. Mahajan said.
Some of the projects under consideration include new sensors and wireless technologies in disaster control to help locate people and assist relief efforts, as well as to detect contaminated water and avoid illness; small, low-cost health appliances to perform simple diagnostics and gather epidemiological information; digital financial products, services and new forms of e-commerce to help entrepreneurs in the countryside and on farms; and technologies to provide communication to 300,000 Indian villages that have no telephones, and to offer new forms of entertainment.
That may explain why the government has approved the $1.09 billion Media Lab Asia project, a collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and India's information technology ministry. The goal is to create technologies to benefit India's masses.
'
'It is just not enough for India to show a 45 percent annual growth in software exports,'' said Pramod Mahajan, India's information technology minister. ''We have to now harness our technical skill base to develop ideas to benefit India's billion-plus population.''
Once ready, the Indian version of the M.I.T. Media Lab, a technology incubator in Cambridge, Mass., is expected to be larger than the original. The expansion into Asia follows the opening of another Media Lab last year in Dublin.
Media Lab Asia will promote a decentralized, project-based approach to research, said Walter Bender, executive director of the M.I.T. Media Lab. ''Projects will be designed to change people's lives using innovative and enabling technologies that can touch all of India,'' Mr. Bender said.
India, with a population of one billion, a dozen official languages and hundreds of regional dialects, has a yawning digital divide. There are fewer than five computers for every 1,000 people.
The lab, to be based outside Bombay with a string of regional laboratories, will receive a fifth of its financing from the Indian government. The rest is expected to come from corporate sponsors contacted by the government and the M.I.T. Media Lab.
Media Lab Asia will emphasize products that deliver the benefits of information, communication and technology to India's rural dwellers, Mr. Mahajan said.
Some of the projects under consideration include new sensors and wireless technologies in disaster control to help locate people and assist relief efforts, as well as to detect contaminated water and avoid illness; small, low-cost health appliances to perform simple diagnostics and gather epidemiological information; digital financial products, services and new forms of e-commerce to help entrepreneurs in the countryside and on farms; and technologies to provide communication to 300,000 Indian villages that have no telephones, and to offer new forms of entertainment.
Source :The New York Times, written by Saritha Rai http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/business/technology-incubator-to-focus-on-india-s-needs.html
- Net communication putting students in touch
More schools are using information-communication equipment and some are even using the technology to carry out exchanges with other schools in distant places.
Yoshiki Ishii, a teacher at an elementary school in Higashimiyoshi, Tokushima Prefecture, began using "Wai Wai Recorder," online collaboration software sold by JR Shikoku Communication Ware Co., in his classes about three years ago.
"Students can expand the scope of their schoolwork by hearing the opinions of other students," he said.
The software allows the students to write words and mount pictures on a personal computer in the same way as on paper, and it enables many students to collaborate at the same time.
If the Internet is used, opinions can be exchanged with students at other schools regardless of distance by jointly editing the same file.
Ishii's class has held such exchanges with a Japanese school in Vienna and the Japanese international school in Frankfurt.
"Exchanges with previously unknown people are a fresh experience. Students have learned to write better by considering how to communicate with others, gaining the power to express themselves," he said.
There is also a product called Pen Navi from the Wao Group that can turn written words and diagrams into digital data and import them to a PC.
If words are written on a piece of paper with small dots printed by a small camera-attached digital pen, the words are sent to a PC by radio and can be seen on the screen of a PC in real time.
Kaoru Matsuda, a teacher at an elementary school in Furukawa, Ibaraki Prefecture, is using Pen Navi in her class.
"As the process of solving a problem can be seen, I can understand where they have made mistakes," Matsuda said. "Also attractive is the fact that students can visually share others' ideas if the process is screened."
It is a great surprise for students that words they have written can be screened in real time.
"Children who are not good at making presentations are eager to participate because they want to use the pen," Matsuda said.
Lessons using such information-communication technology are popular with children and many teachers are realizing its effects. But due to financial reasons, such technology has not yet made it to all schools.
Nevertheless, as the government promotes computerization in classrooms, aiming to install one PC per 3.6 students and the almost 100 percent construction of a school local area network by March 2011, information-communication technology continues to spread.
Source : The Japan Times written by Junko Suzuki http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20081001f4.html#.T_56zFvzt18
- PC programming is "new Latin"
BRITAIN’S love of gaming could lead to a wave of computer whizz-kids, after a government’s technology adviser recommended that programming becomes “the new Latin” in school syllabuses.
Charles Armstrong is just the latest high-profile figure to back proposed upgrades of the current Information and Communications Technology (ICT) teaching - supporting a campaign that has been joined by the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google and Activision.
Addressing the London Policy Conference earlier this month, Armstrong insisted that children should be given at least the “opportunity” to code.
He said: “ICT in schools has become simply an exercise teaching how to use mainstream software.
“Computer programming is like music and every child will benefit in some way from being taught the basics at an early age.”
His comments come after two of the computer gaming industry’s leaders – Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope - penned a report calling for the UK to transform itself into the “world’s leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries” and include computer science in the national curriculum.
A report from the schools inspectorate Ofsted published this week states that ICT teaching in two thirds of English secondary schools was sub-standard and required serious improvement.
* Armstrong is the co-founder of Trampoline Systems who have have produced ‘Tech City Map’ which is a project analysing the East London technology ecosystem that was launched by David Cameron last month.
Addressing the London Policy Conference earlier this month, Armstrong insisted that children should be given at least the “opportunity” to code.
He said: “ICT in schools has become simply an exercise teaching how to use mainstream software.
“Computer programming is like music and every child will benefit in some way from being taught the basics at an early age.”
His comments come after two of the computer gaming industry’s leaders – Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope - penned a report calling for the UK to transform itself into the “world’s leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries” and include computer science in the national curriculum.
A report from the schools inspectorate Ofsted published this week states that ICT teaching in two thirds of English secondary schools was sub-standard and required serious improvement.
* Armstrong is the co-founder of Trampoline Systems who have have produced ‘Tech City Map’ which is a project analysing the East London technology ecosystem that was launched by David Cameron last month.
Source : The Sun written by Lee Price http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fun/gaming/4085287/PC-programming-is-new-Latin.html
- Foxconn CEO reportedly says iPhone 5 will outdo Galaxy S III
Foxconn CEO Terry Gou reportedly urged customers to hold off on buying the Galaxy S III, saying the next iPhone will put Samsung's flagship phone to shame, according to the China Times, which was quoted in English by Focus Taiwan on Tuesday.
The comments come just as the Galaxy S III -- which is the latest device to be called an "iPhone killer" -- gets set to launch on T-Mobile and Sprint, albeit with some limitations and delays.
with the Galaxy S III also set to be sold through Verizon and AT&T next month, some have said that the phone is positioned to at the very least challenge the iPhone in recognition.
But it'll be interesting to see what kind of impact Gou's comments have, especially because people involved in the process of making Apple products hardly ever speak about them before they are announced, let alone vouch for them.
However, Gou's actions aren't completely out of left field. Just last month, there were reports that he may or may not have said Foxconn was making preparations to begin producing Apple TVs.
As far as the sixth generation iPhone, the most recent reports say the phone is expected to drop sometime this fall, probably in October.
The next iPhone is also rumored to get many more physical changes than the last iteration of the iPhone received. Reports have said the iPhone will be getting a 4-inch screen, up from 3.5-inches, and a differently styled back cover. Apple could also change the iPhone's dock connector to a smaller port and redo its speakers.
Source : Long Angeles Times written by Salvador Rodriguez http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-foxconn-ceo-iphone-galaxy-s-iii-20120620,0,2709670.story
