There was a time when photography needed paper and that paper had an environmental cost that took generations to understand, but that’s all changed, I mean now we take a picture, save it to this metal device and if we want to share it, we press send? There is no cost to the environment? And even more efficiently, we save it to the cloud, so I don’t need to worry about buying more storage devices which is a physical item, and physical items are not environmentally friendly.
So, we are good? Everything is in The Cloud, “Hmmm!”
There is a law in physics that states, “Energy cannot be neither created nor destroyed”, “it can only be transferred”, well that is the same with almost anything, including the famous “Cloud Storage”
Even more astonishing, the cost of The Cloud Storage on the environment is getting to be more expensive as camera’s are becoming better and better by increasing the quality of the picture and storage size.
To understand all of this we need to start from a place, a moment we are all familiar with, that moment we take a simple 1 millisecond picture.
“Smile!” and Snap!
5 megabytes of data is captured, but what does that mean?
In that millisecond, a bunch of 1’s and 0’s are stored that creates that picture. How does this work? And why 1 and 0?
As you’ve probably heard before, computers only understand “1’s and 0’s” or “On or Off”, Most of us can’t relate to it because we think in a much more evolved state. For example, we can tell instantly that the light is dim or too bright and not just on or off. We have choices in our minds, but a computer does not, it is either on or off.
There for as you’re reading this article, the article is actually stored in 1’s and 0’s,
0 = 00000000
1 = 00000001
2 = 00000010…..
A = 01000001
B = 01000010…..
Even a picture equals 1’s and 0’s. All these 1’s and 0’s are stored in a very unique way so that we can access them, read or show.
Let’s get even more techie? All of this happened when we found a way to “trap” electrons, the foundation of electricity. If we can trap a single electron, we call it a “1” and no trap, a “0”.
Therefore, in that phone, we have gazillions of traps that hold or may not hold an electron.
Each trap represents a Binary Number, a single 1 or 0 is considered to 1 bit and it takes 8 bits to form any letter of the alphabet. 8 bits equals 1 byte. Almost done, it takes 1000 bytes to equal 1 megabyte and 1000 megabytes to equal 1 Gigabyte. (We rounded up for simplicity)
So that moment you took a picture, 5 Megabytes or 6,291,456 bits (1’s and 0’s) are stored, and for some of you Techie’s, 6,291,456 electrons were trapped or not trapped into a metal case with plastic and silicon advancement.
Why This explanation?
Although an electron is beyond small, as with anything, the more there are, the more space something will take up, just like a drop of water versus a lake. While we start to understand how your computer works and how we interact with it connected to the world, we start to see the millions of pieces of data that we send, receive, copy, and store.
In our households the space required to keep our treasured memories is significantly less now than it would have been years ago, thanks to evolving times and digital photos, this would not be the case if we were to instead keep hard copy of photo albums, CD’s, Tapes or USB sticks. Each and every time we send that photo, and the receiver saves it, an additional copy is stored away in the cloud. We are taxing This Cloud of ours, with duplicates, triplicates, and thousands of copies.
All these copies don’t only require space but also requires manufacturing of these devices that store them. In turn they produce gas and bi-product waste. Additionally, power is needed in the datacenters for electricity and cooling, and so forth… all of which leave behind a carbon footprint.
It may be time to consider a new method, a new term and even a new movement, “Green Computing”.
Being defined as we speak, Green Computing is a movement not just for the environment, but the user. A philosophy that is ethical, secure, safe and is so efficient that the tax of duplicate items stored will be reduced incredibly. It is a concept that will enhance your sharing of your photo’s while giving you the control of who, when and where files can be viewed. Your files no longer copied or sent, but simply shared, and sharing reduces the vulnerabilities while reducing the footprint of space. Sharing gives you the control of when to share and to whom.
As Mazzzing is leading this new cloud computing era, it has taken the time and creativity to not just improve your experience but to consider what is security and can your privacy help the environment?
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