If you believe Lester Thurow of MIT, the victory of mind over matter has arrived. He argues for investment in "brain power industries" that "do not require natural resources."
But get real.
The "information society" demands enormous amounts of material resources. The production of a single PC requires 33,000 liters of water - about the annual per capita consumption in Western Europe. It also results in 640 pounds of waste, some highly toxic. With special techniques, you might reduce a PC's yearly energy consumption from 85 kilowatt-hours to 40. Pretty good, compared to the 5,000 kWh used for its production.
So should we smash the computers? No. But we need to realize the wired world will always be deeply rooted in the material one, and dependent on its sustainability.
- Harald Preissler (preiss@dbresearch-berlin.de) and Burkhard Jaerisch are members of the Society and Technology Research Group at Daimler Benz AG.
