Netflix Shame

TEXT VIVEKA BROCKMAN & LUKAS ALBER ILLUSTRATION VENDELA HAMBERG

“Imagine a society where we will have more connected devices than people living on the planet. In the immediate future year 2025, more than 24.9 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections are forecasted compared to the estimated human population of 8.1 billion people.” [quote from Ericsson]

In a society like this, physical meetings can The 0.2 seconds required for your Google puter, a pilot project a few years back ateasily be replaced by a convenient digital search hardly leaves time to consider how tempted to build up infrastructure to capalternative. As we’ve all been experiencing much energy was just spent. Take some ture the otherwise lost energy. It showed the past few weeks, we might be able to time, let’s say 10 seconds, and guess how promising results, however, the project was escape infection, but not class as long as much. Or if you’d like, make the appropri- never realized because of implementation the virus does not go digital, too. Saved ate Google search to find out. Energeti- difficulties. The not-so-cool computer may by technology again, pretty great, huh? cally, the two options are equivalent, take not be the greenest as it continues heatFor those of us with the highly useful skill your pick. The 0.3 Wh that a person uses ing up its surroundings, but maintaining its of multitasking and an average ownership in 10 seconds are also demanded by the status as Stockholm’s fastest, it has useful of three connected devices, we can even hungry Google algorithms [numbers from computing power ready to be harnessed attend multiple classes at once. This im- Google]. by researchers. proved time management leaves us only three clicks (instead of three subway stops) The benefits of technological developaway from trading the lecture se- ment need not be pointed out, ries for the Netflix series. but consideration should be givOur extensive digital con- one of the fastest growing energy sumption is only interrupted consumers can have. Whether it’s when the food supply is running low. Paranoid hoarders can find "As a typical environmentally access to computing power or to unlimited movies that is appealing, some comfort in the fact that even though an unlimited sup- conscious university student, all of us should realize that it requires energy, the supply of which ply of food is unrealistic, Netflix promises us an unlimited supply it is easy to notice and make is limited. We are aware that there are both pros and cons of the plasof movies and series; Spotify an unlimited amount of music; an effort to decrease our contic bag of chips that goes along with the Netflix series, but the Wikipedia an unlimited amount of knowledge and our teachers sumption of tangible things: same is true for the data centers enabling the streaming. an unlimited amount of digital homework assignments. less shopping, less plastic, This article is not a suggested Can we take uprising tech less meat, you know about it. ticket back to the technological stone age, nor an encouragement giants’ word on offering any- Among the overwhelming im- to write your assignments withthing to infinity? Limitless availability stands in striking contrast portance of reducing our footout the internet. Not intending to cause too much Netflix Shame, we to our understanding of other finite physical resources. As print, the invisible energy cost wish to leave you with a word of advice from our interview partner, a typical environmentally conscious university student, it is of digital services manages to Prof. Dr. Michael Hanke: “Just like any resource, use it responsibly.” easy to notice and make an effort to decrease our consumption of escape the actionable list." For more information about Nettangible things: less shopping, flix Shame, check out our article less plastic, less meat, you know “OL on the Streets.” about it. Among the overwhelming importance of reducing our footprint, the invisible energy cost of digital services manages to escape the actionable list. Luckily, there’s no need to take the long Perhaps the energy consumed by cloud witness the energy costs of going high services has itself been clouded by a focus tech. We need not look further than to our on their benefits globally. On the one hand, own campus. Those of us who have seen we are experiencing an exponential rise in the casing of the PDC supercomputer at cloud services (i.e. storage, IoT, browsing, KTH may find it is Pretty Damn Cool, but streaming) and computation which has re- what it really stands for is Parallel Dator vealed a vast space of opportunity. On the Centrum and it needs a whole lot of energy other hand, this all comes at an energy cost to remain cool. which is hidden from the consumer. What In order to combat both the energy and is this invisible cost and why can’t we see monetary costs of running the supercomit? flight across the pond to Silicon Valley to en to the cumulative effect that