June 16, 2005
Long lasting, low energy computing
Seeing as humanity is soon to enter a low-energy future it seems a shame to me that computers, in their current state, may well be one of the first things to go. Isn't the whole magic of computing that it allows us to do more with less? Doesn't it help us use less energy by reducing the need for things to be collocated?
So why is it that they may be one of the first things to disappear from a low-energy future? At first glance, it seems like my laptop uses next to no power, not much more than a lightbulb. Surely we could run these in the future by peddling a bicycle or something?
Sadly, this isn't the case. Computers a product of a high-energy society. Although the link isn't immediately apparent, part of the reason our modern society is able to be as complex as it is in terms of just raw information is its access to cheap energy. If computers are to survive into the future they will need to have characteristics apart from just being low energy consumers. If this were all that was required we'd have the problem in the bag; there is already active research into low power CPUs.
Unfortunately, the problem is deeper than that. We have to think about the issue of creating hardware components and how long they last. In today's consumer society we hardly think about these issues at all. Most of us buy a new computer once every two to three years; some of us do it even more regularly. Not only that, within the lifetime of a computer we often replace components such has ram and hard-drives. Sometimes this is simply because we're upgrading, but often it's because continued use of a particular component is courting disaster. For instance, it would be sheer madness to use a harddrive for more than two years without backing it up.
Does it bother anyone that books, those supposedly "primitive" information artifacts, are still the undisputed king when it comes to durability? CDs, DVDs, magnetics disks. None of these lasts all that long. It is only the fact that we introduce large levels of redundancy into our systems that ensures the survival of our data.
The problem with hardware it that it can't maintain itself. It has no ability to heal itself. The same is true for most software. But that's precisely the sort of characteristic that would make computing in a low-energy setting a possibility and not just a pipe-dream.
Part of the reason that scieties from the low-energy past were able to manage their resources was that most of the were bioligical in nature. Although some maintenance was necessary, it was of the most basic kind: watering and feeding.
So in summary I think research needs to be put into the following things:
- low-energy manufacturing techniques
- durability and longevity
- self-healing systems, both in hardware and software
I'd be very interested in hearing any comments people had on this.