Green Collar Technologies » digital

The Short Version of Obama vs. McCain: The Wired Scorecard

Server — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:28 +0000

Although we don’t do politics here we do provide educational resources for green collar workers. This post falls into the Educational Resources for Green Collar Technology Workers category. Aside from the obvious voter information context, the full article at Wired magazine has a synopis for tech workers relating the issues listed below.

Knowing these issues can help us all identity opportunities and threats to strengthening Hawai`i’s digital economies. These issues are important to anyone wishing to support a strong digital economy in Hawai`i.

I’ve shortened the Wired article into the following scorecard (link to full post at bottom):

Broadband - The Issue: The United States is becoming a tortoise in a world of hares. One of the world’s most Wired nations a decade ago, we now lag behind most of our peers.

Broadband Grade:
McCain: D
Obama: B

H1B issues - The Issue: Many people skilled in technology around the world want to work in the United States, but it’s tough to get in if you don’t have a family member already living here.

H1B Visas Grade:
McCain: B+
Obama: C

Investment in green tech - The Issue: Technology is the best, and only way, to get us out of our environmental mess. Government’s best bet at solving this problem isn’t to pick and fund specific winners.

Green Tech Grade:
McCain: B
Obama: A

Net neutrality - The Issue: The question here is whether the telecom companies can pick and choose what they send over their pipes.

Net Nuetrality Grade:
McCain: D
Obama: A

Spectrum - The Issue: Spectrum is the technological equivalent of the roads over which our technology travels. Right now, clunky companies that use oxcarts own many of the widest highways.

Spectrum Grade:
McCain: B
Obama: B

Read the full post at Wired.com:

Obama vs. McCain: The Wired Scorecard

Brent.fm post on TV Whitespaces includes video from Google.

Local comments below, national comments at Wired please.

Our Digital Economy is Saving the Planet’s Assets

Server — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:05:11 +0000

Bits and bytes travel in the air waves with almost zero friction. Gravity barely affects numbers on the web. The people pushing pixels and text around all day from home have little impact on carbon emissions. The leverage afforded by the Internet can bring a disproportionate amount of money to Hawai`i and is surely worthy of research.

Many folks in our own local economy work at least part-time online. Some sell products while others have figured out how to sell knowledge or provide a service remotely. Others use web-based tools to simply monetize the popularity of their websites. Our digital economy is growing and one day it will help us become “sustainable island.”

The net-effect of teaching people how to sustain themselves or thrive using a computer and an Internet connection is straight out of science fiction. It’s also an ideal setup for a remote paradise.

Here in our isolated, micro-eco-system we have great potential by strengthening our digital economies. As we strive to become the model for other sustainability efforts (food, energy, health) we need to consider the ways digitization is helping reduce consumption and preserve the local environment.

Another largely digital force, Google, is also contributing in many ways. First by working with other industry giants, Microsoft and Yahoo! to setup giant green data centers and now by dedicating resources to help educate and create renewable energy sources.

Learn how Google is, “Building a future that’s clean and green”.

Five Critical Success Factors for Hawaii’s Digital Economies

Server — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:01:29 +0000

Five Critical Success Factors

Let’s continue outlining what we need to promote and strengthen our digital economies in Hawaii. Any help is greatly appreciate. Uhm, actually, your participation is required. Please pay particular attention to #3 below and comment below.

Availability – bandwidth, training and the affordability of these resources will dictate any need to improve our digital economies. If the Internet isn’t highly available and affordable in Hawaii, there’s simply no need to pursue a digital economy. Therefore, we believe that keeping our systems affordable and available are the highest priority.
Understanding – our ability to “get it” will be directly proportionate to our ability to harness the disruptive nature of the Internet.
Personal adoption – We need to embrace our digital economies at all levels including, age, demographics, government, schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and individuals. This includes public officials and community leaders at the highest levels. While adopting at the organizational level is important for availability within an organization, the leaders of the organization must personally adopt the web as a tool and make it their own. Those who do “get it” must demand that public officials demonstrate their adoption levels through participation.
Assessment and Goal Setting – To succeed we need to know where we are and where we’re going. Green Collar Technologies is compiling a list of resources.
1. How much bandwidth is available? By area? Future projections?
2. How much electronic commerce is currently being conducted in Hawaii? Annually? By region?
3. How many citizens are working on digital projects? How many online jobs exist? How many telecommuters? How many workers in Hawaii spend over 50% of their job online?
Analysis, reporting, transparency and ethics – There’s a distinct and obvious absence of key players involvement in raising awareness of the issues. See #2-3. Fear still seems prevalant in many areas as some leaders allow others to represent themselves online. Increased transparency means key players should be writing in blogs to provide updates on key issues. It is becoming increasingly unethical to represent yourself online, through an intermediary in an effort to seem to be something you are not.

The list of five will surely grow and shrink over the next few years. Look beyond a sustainable Hawaii and you’ll find room for growth in digital economies. I have a hunch that the former may never exist without the latter. Anyone agree?

Digital Renewable Energy Production

Server — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:09:27 +0000

What does “Digital Energy Renewal” look like? Wait, that’s a little too abstract. What I’m trying to communicate is the potential to harness bits and bytes on the Internet that are either being underutilized or not used at all. Just as a windmill harnesses unused wind, is there a similar potential for unused bits and bytes on the web?

An immediate example the comes to mind is domain parking. Another example might be an application that cleans hard drives of old backups. Of course both of these already exist. Sedo.com helps you monetize your unused domains by collecting the traffic that would otherwise receive an error message. The collected traffic is monetized and returned to the owner in pennies per clicks.

Lots of hard drive cleaning applications exists that function with varying degrees of effectiveness. To my knowledge this only happens on your local drive. So if you were to send your hard drive cleaning utility to your myspeace, picasa, youtube, flickr or other repository, it would be blocked at the firewall. A trusted application could be developed that made sure you were only duplicating your files rather than triple or quadruple back ups. I’m not against regulating the amount of backups you can have. I’m just wondering what the impact would be if you had more accurate information that you could trust. Gee, what if we could just “identify” all of the duplicate files on the web? I’m sure I’m late to that party already.

For example, if you knew you had your videos stored at two sites online and on two drives at home and you knew these backups were all of high integrity, would you then be willing to let software clean your files off a fifth backup location? If so, would you get a credit of sorts for the amount of drive space you’ve saved? This is important but not the effect I’m looking for.

I’m more interested in the bits and bytes that have energy. The bits and bytes that are used in a manner that is not helping anyone or anything. For example, the web pages that are indexed by bots but never seen or used by humans. Can the energy the bots use to index these pages be harnessed by a windmill kind of a contraption? Like a digital windmill? Or a digital solar panel? Let’s call it digital renewable energy production. I know, thinking about this is ridiculous. Thank goodness, these things can be archived for later examination. If anyone has any relevant research or is interested in collaborating on this, please comment below.