Go paperless.
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@ancientsounds @harld ehhhhhhh there are other issues, though. Paper production and shipping use energy resources and they have an impact.
On the whole, an old-school email was probably more energy efficient, which is what that old saying was about. But at that time even with wildly less efficient computers we probably used way less energy per email.
Maybe, but I'd love to see the numbers. Running networks, and computers to read and write messages on, always consumed lots of energy and material resources.
Also, I made an observation about paper being an actually-existing form of carbon capture and storage.
An email vs. sending a letter - you could be right. A filing cabinet vs. a hard drive, powered on? A library vs. a file store? Maybe, maybe not.
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Go paperless.
@harld I will keep mentioning the Jevons paradox until everybody understands what it is and how it works
Making use of a resource more profitable increases the return on investment of exploiting that resource.
So increased systems efficiency *increases*, not decreases, resource use.
Unless your approach is to have a fixed expectation for capability and just optimize for lower and lower resource use to achieve that capability. Which is not how capitalism works, at all.
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Go paperless.
@harld Yeah, though to be fair, it's not the "paperless" part that is consuming all the resources. -
@shansterable @harld They may have had incentives other than the environment for pushing paperless, but if the result is the more environmentally friendly choice, does that really matter?
@lancehomer @shansterable @harld
It matters if the logic and evidence are flawed, yes. -
@lancehomer @shansterable @harld
It matters if the logic and evidence are flawed, yes.@harld @ancientsounds @shansterable Are they flawed? Paperless certainly isn’t carbon neutral, but if the net environmental impact is lower than printing and mailing paper statements to all customers, I’m still not sure why the company’s financial incentive matters.
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@harld @ancientsounds @shansterable Are they flawed? Paperless certainly isn’t carbon neutral, but if the net environmental impact is lower than printing and mailing paper statements to all customers, I’m still not sure why the company’s financial incentive matters.
@lancehomer @harld @shansterable
There was an “if”.
As I said, I'd like to see the numbers. I've heard the slogan “go paperless” many times, but never with a quantitative analysis to back it up, so I'm just questioning it.
One factor that needs considering for some documents (e.g. books) is the value, by printing, of carbon capture and storage. Another issue is how many times a document will be viewed.
Another issue arises when some “authority”, e.g. a financial institution, requires sight of original paper documents. In the UK, to open a new savings or bank account, you're legally required to provide proof of ID and address, such as a utility bill ... or bank account ... at the same time as banks are strongly nudging everyone to “go paperless”. So yes, it matters a lot.
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@harld I will keep mentioning the Jevons paradox until everybody understands what it is and how it works
Making use of a resource more profitable increases the return on investment of exploiting that resource.
So increased systems efficiency *increases*, not decreases, resource use.
Unless your approach is to have a fixed expectation for capability and just optimize for lower and lower resource use to achieve that capability. Which is not how capitalism works, at all.
@renardboy @shtrom @harld thank you for this excellent explanation, I hadn't seen the Jevons paradox framed this way before
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@harld
I never bought it: paper production is based on sustainably harvesting fairly young, fast-growing trees, which absorb way more CO_2 than old trees, which are not used for paper. Therefore, printed paper libraries are actually-existing carbon capture and storage facilities. Not joking.@ancientsounds @harld Libraries (paper books) are carbon capture and storage facilities.
Love it! Another reason to
libraries 
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Go paperless.
@harld interesting discussion!
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Go paperless.
@harld Corporations ruin everything.
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@harld Yeah, though to be fair, it's not the "paperless" part that is consuming all the resources.
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@harld I will keep mentioning the Jevons paradox until everybody understands what it is and how it works
Making use of a resource more profitable increases the return on investment of exploiting that resource.
So increased systems efficiency *increases*, not decreases, resource use.
Unless your approach is to have a fixed expectation for capability and just optimize for lower and lower resource use to achieve that capability. Which is not how capitalism works, at all.
@renardboy @harld Is 'efficiency' in the sense of cost reduction and 'efficiency' in the sense of use reduction always the same?
I work as a production editor in a publishing office, and we're pretty much paperless. I never print out a damn thing. There are certain advantages for using Word files and pdfs all along the way--usually fewer typos in the finished product. But, being old enough to remember doing it all on paper--even doing layouts with waxers and x-acto knives--I can say that the *process* of editing and proofreading are worse, less efficient, slower, than marking paper by hand.
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Go paperless.
Coal and Gas: "as long as you aren't blaming us, it's all good."
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Go paperless.
It's not the digital, though, per se.
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Go paperless.
@harld pretty big conflation there.
Going paperless didn't get us here, a fascist American tech sector did.
Typing up a report in a word processor is a vastly different proposition to demanding bullshit machines write the same report 100 times until the machine spits out something believable
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Go paperless.
“People will do the work
So machines have time to think” - #Biftek 2000https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955dZpR7QwY&list=RD955dZpR7QwY&start_radio=1&rv=955dZpR7QwY
Note: ( Based on samples from Raymond Scott's 1967, "The Paperwork Explosion."
IBM-Jim Henson see: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Raymond+Scott%27s+paperwork+explosion+) -
It's not the digital, though, per se.
I'd like also to mention, that I'd need to store around 10 tons of books if I had them on paper instead of digital/paperless.
Apart from thee question whether I could afford this, I cannot imagine heating these additional room would not over time add up to a hefty carbon footprint.
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Go paperless.
@harld paperless is better but if you ditch paper for giant companies that will process you data for their benefit then yes, that’s not great.
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@harld Corporations ruin everything.
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Go paperless.
@harld Whoever said computers would usher in a paperless society did not envision printers capable of putting out multiple pages in a minute (let alone data centers churning out AI and crypto, with the accompanying resource usage).
A friend told me that when he started working in the computer field right out of college, an older colleague bet him that computers would create paperless workplaces within two years.
The guy had the decency to pay up. In 1967.
