Signals and Green Computing

theMarketSoul is at CeBit 2010 in Germany this week.  Arrived yesterday and what struck us immediately is the focus on Green Computing.

This makes us think and turn to the issue of signals.  Signals in a system and economy, whatever people interpret, analyse and utilise to make and take decisions on.

And then how very ‘unsophisticated’ we are about the application and utilisation of the information these ‘measurement instruments’ and signals give us.

Humans have impacted this planet for around 20,000 – 50,000 years (more accurately around 10,000 – 15,000 years that we have measured ourselves), the plant has been in existence for around 3 – 5 billion years, so when we talk about the timeframe involved in measuring the human impact on the planet , the fact that purely on a matter of scale, our impact is statistically insignificant compared to the timescale that the earth has existed.

And so it has been with the money supply and economic signals the sages of our time, namely Central Bankers and economists had to interpret.

The problem comes down to a lack of appreciation, not through any fault of our own, except for the general failures of the education system, to teach and turn out conveyor belts of ‘Analysts’, rather than going further and moving into the space of innovation where the key skills set of Synthesis is required.

For years we gorged on the over supply of credit and money, however widely Money Supply is defined, and the measurement instruments at our disposal had failed to keep us from ‘banishing Boom and Bust’ cycles.  It is almost as if the more measure and the more we interpret the data, the further we move away from finding the answers we require to ‘keep the beast on a sustainable course’.

So has it been a failure of the measurement instruments or the people interpreting those measurement instruments or have we ‘chopped the timeframe into too small chucks’; meaning that we either overreact or sometimes do not act enough to intervene and steer a clear course through the mists and hidden obstacles on our life’s journey.

This is where we return to CeBit 2010 and the Green Computing issues.

It seems that the Computer and ICT industry has now reached the maturity point where they are confident enough to re-engineer the processes and scale of ‘things they do’ in order to help reduce their ‘Carbon Footprint’. 

Cloud Computing, no matter how you define it, still means that somewhere, someone has to own large tracts of real estate to house the computer farms on.  This in turn consumes energy and as a by-product increases carbon emissions. By moving some or all of your computing and application needs from your own servers and desk tops to  someone else’s, the fundamental truth still remains that all you have really achieved it to outsource and move the problem up the value chain somewhere.

However, the question really is what the landscape will look like in 50 years time, when on reflection we can look back at the way and shape of the world, with problems and challenges packaged into new shapes and sizes.   Of that theMarketSoul has not seen very much evidence at CeBit 2010 yet, but there is an awful lot of real estate and distance to cover at CeBit 2010, so watch out for some more information and or a retraction in due course.

The blog today was brought to you by Wireless Technology.

theMarketSoul ©2010