SOCIAL: Fwd: Introducing iPhone 4.

Mon Jun 7 23:21:17 PDT 2010

wow very interesting thoughts everybody !

Tom thanks for writing from the book you mentioned. I always knew that we
are putting a lot of  pressure on our resources to create these 'things'
that we need on a daily basis. Or rather we think we need on a daily basis
and create our lives around it.
This reminds me of Gandhi.
One thing that has impressed me greatly about Gandhi is that he believed in
using things that he made or could manage on his own without too much of an
outside influence. One of the outcomes was Khadi - a cloth you could weave
on your own! Imagine if you were to use things that you made!  That would
leave me with only the paintings and the food in my house...and no footwear
to create footprints!

Kunal I also think people have a very different sense and idea of balance
depending on who they are, how well off they are, and many other factors! I
am not 100% convinced that we  can let people decide their own definition of
a balance (I sound like a dictator right now, I know).  However,  I think
people have made certain choices and thats one of the major reasons why our
society is where it is. I also feel that people who can think of balance in
this day and age are usually the ones who can afford to make choices.

I still remember when I was growing up in India it was ok to have one car
per family. The richer the family got the number of cars increased, the
gadgets, technology etc. increased. From desktop to Laptop from..home phone
to cell phones for everyone in the family....

Technology really excites  I will not end up buying because of peer pressure
or anything but i know a lot of people get sucked into things like
these...maybe social advertising will help!

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Kunal Ghevaria <anarchytecture at mac.com>wrote:

> I always find it fascinating how people take far more destructive
> activities like owning a car, eating meat, buying a huge TV, or flying
> around the world several times on vacations for granted, but agonize over
> buying recycled toilet paper (or the impact of a phone!)
>
> I'd say the key is balance - if you don't own a car, don't eat meat, and
> don't buy lots of gadgets, perhaps you shouldn't agonize over buying a
> phone. Your carbon footprint is probably quite low, and you're ok.
>
> On the other hand, if you have a car, eat meat, and own a Wii, Xbox and
> PS3, you shouldn't just get the latest phone (except gadgets kinda define
> your personality in some self-important way, and you'll probably end up
> owning one anyways...)
>
> Palak, in the end, if you think it might have real utility to you to have
> the latest iPhone, like video calling with relatives in India or something,
> buy it!
>
> Jobs did say that the technology behind video calls was open, which
> possibly means that soon we'll have tons of apps which allow computer to
> phone video calls (if Apple approves those apps...) which does mean that
> yes, it will change the way we communicate. Especially with people that we
> don't see often in real life.
>
> Don't buy it just to have the latest thing, or feel pressured to because
> everyone else has it. Just think about need and balance :)
>
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> On Jun 7, 2010, at 7:40 PM, Tom Radulovich wrote:
>
> It's an excellent point, Palak. These machines are the product of a culture
> that plans in obsolescence. Even if you want to hold on to them (as I do,
> not necessarily out of virtue, but rather because I am cheap, and don't like
> to have to learn how to use new gadgets) they aren't made to last, or the
> company that makes them quickly stops supporting them. As I write this, I am
> sitting in an office with four non-working printers that need to be disposed
> of. I just took a bunch of mobile-phone chargers to Goodwill for electronics
> recycling yesterday, and was reminded of how wasteful (and expensive!) it is
> that every phone seems to have a unique charger – while I understand that
> the EU now requires that all phones sold in Europe from now on have a
> standard charger, it seems a way off here in the US.
>
> I started reading John Thackara's book, In the Bubble, which is about
> design. He has a great chapter on how much waste that the electronics
> industry generates:
>
> "Apart from its impact on the wider economy, information technology is
> heavy in itself. It's a heavy user of matter in all the hardware needed to
> run it. One of the hidden costs of the misnamed sillicon age is the material
> and energy flows involved in the manufacture and use of microchips. It takes
> 1.7 kilograms of materials to make a microchip with 32 megabytes of
> random-access memory - a total of 630 times the mass of the final product.
> The "fab" of a basic memory chip, and running it for the typical life span
> of a computer, eats up eight hundred times the chip's weight in fossil fuel.
> Thousands of potentially toxic chemicals are used in the manufacturing
> process. A single microchip is, it is true, a small thing – on its own. But
> there are a lot of them about – and many more to come. Promoters of
> ubiquitous computing promise us that *trillions* of smart embedded devices
> are on the way.
>
> " The ecological footprint of computing is not limited to the chips. The
> manufacture of electronic devices also involves highly intensive material
> processes. A great deal of nature has to be moved during the production of
> communications equipment. Many components require the use of high-grade
> minerals that can be obtained only through major mining operations and
> energy-intensive transformation processes. One of the most startling pieces
> of information brought to light in Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
> Lovins' *Natural Capitalism *is that the amount of waste matter generated
> in the manufacture of a single laptop computer is close to four thousand
> times its weight on your lap. Fifteen to nineteen tons of energy and
> materials are consumed in the fabrication of one desktop computer. To
> compound matters: As well as being resource-greedy to make, information
> technology devices also have notoriously short lives. The average compact
> disc is used precisely once in its life, and every gram of material that
> goes into the consumption or production of a computer ends up rather quickly
> as either an emission or as solid waste. In theory, electronic products have
> technical service lives on the magnitude of thirty years, but thanks to
> ever-shorter innovation cycles, many devices are disposed of after a few
> years or months."
>
>
> On Jun 7, 2010, at 3:55 PM, palak joshi wrote:
>
> I am not sure if i am supposed to feel like this but I do anyway.  Maybe
> someone will have an explanaiton that will make me feel better.
> I do understand evolution and how things get better with time..after usage
> and with new technology. But i cant help but get a little upset over the
> fact that the iphone that i had excitedly bought a couple of years ago is
> now 'outdated'. It doesnt have any of the things that 4 g (right) have!
> Am I supposed to stay committed to my existing phone (its cracked!) or go
> for the better one? When does one 'settle down' with a technology...does
> that happen when one dies or when one doesnt have any money ...and to me
> both sound like extreme.
> What is the fine line between consumerism and getting excited with new
> technology? I have had these qustions bother me many times...I would love to
> talk about it if any body else feels the same way..if not i will wait around
> for the next topic on social  :)
>
> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Amy Muller <amymuller at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
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