What is green computing? Lately I've felt the pull of my moral compass telling me I need to do something significant, something that helps change this world that I live in, that my family lives in, heck everyone lives in. I'm not living any kind of delusion that I will invent something so ground breaking that I'll fix our climate issues (I'm not exactly a scientist). But it has to be something more than recycling my pop cans or buying biodegradable diapers for my 1 year old.
I guess the hard part about this process is trying to understand what is 'green' computing? What is 'green' software? Can software be 'green'? I feel I'm at the beginning of an interesting journey and I wanted to share it with everyone. So welcome to my blog.
I've often tried to find social relevance in my job as a software developer. More often than not, in software it's hard to see the role reach individual plays as contributing meaningfully to society as a whole. One notable exception I've found is in Medical devices, automation and improving quality of living for the disabled.
ReplyDeleteComputers and the internet are great for communication and sharing our little worlds, but they can also be great for leveling the playing fields for the disabled, giving everyone an equal ability to contribute and share on a global level.
I totally agree, unless you are working for a few niche projects, in this case, medical devices, it's sometimes very hard to get that 'fuzzy good' feeling from the software you are writing.
ReplyDeleteI think a big part of green computing will come down to the hardware. Everyone has a multi core system on their desk these days, but do most of them really need it? With the advent of chips like Intel's Atom line, low power desktop computing is becoming a lot more feasible.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there are areas where we need a lot of horsepower, but that doesn't necessarily need to be on everyone's desks. These low power CPUs will cut down immensely on power consumption if we adopt them.
John, I totally agreed that power, energy and such will be mostly hardware - but there is nothing stoping us (technologies) from applying the 'green' to the business or process that we are creating or enabling with the software. See my next post about mokugift.com as an example of a green company enabled by the use of web technologies.
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