what is “sustainability”?
Treehugger has a story talking about the over-use of the word. “sustainability” seems to be going the way of “green” and “organic”, vague feel-good terms without a specific definition.
I started this blog in the beginnning with the intent of writing about “sustainable computing”, but of course, that is a meaningless term, thus the number of posts I’ve written on the topic (0).
If you go with the classic definition of “sustainability”
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
then computing as we know it today cannot be sustainable until all of the components of our computing environment are fully recyclable and do not use more energy than necessary. OTOH, today’s dirty wasteful computers are a very valuable tool that can be used towards a “sustainable” goal.