3 ms·

With 5G latencies, you can remote control more things (like excavators). Which means less need for humans to be physically present, which means less transportat

With 5G latencies, you can remote control more things (like excavators). Which means less need for humans to be physically present, which means less transportation (read: cars), which means less pollution. Looking at the bigger picture, and counting in energy savings innovations on the basestation/network level, and so on, it might not be a clear-cut "5G spends more energy".

fock 8y ago
When all thy mercies, oh my progress... I think you're a victim of the fallacy of eternal growth thaught for years by capitalist and communist economists alike (and even picked up by most green movements around the globe). If you realize that our consumption is way above it's sustainable limit, the only way to prove that we have really evolved from the barbarism of a pack of wolves is to try everything possible to fold back consumption into this limit. And since we start crossing some irreversibility thresholds, this means acting now. So we should start cutting consumption and innovate existing technologies so that they become more efficient, instead of increasing consumption and hoping (which roots back to religion – it's kind of interesting that in a time of the decline of classic, philosophical religions, most of the people have adopted blind trust into technology, which does not recognise hardship or offer any consolence in it) for some random technological breakthrough (which would then need years to be adapted on scale – of course we can still search (R&D is not that big of a polluter (except for nukes))). I really would like to see some calculations for "the bigger picture", which show that 5G and the entailing consumption frenzy will bring us nearer to a sustainable society. Practically for remote-controlled exvacators: why can't you just put a remote control-terminal ontop of the next fibre-"hub"? 5G (or at least the part, where you build small cells with high-frequency-bands) won't be deployed in Alaska anytime soon and this is something which you can easily add on todays infrastructure once you realize that it's actually beneficial. Maybe you should also take a step back on exvacation – with steel and concrete making up about 15% of carbon-dioxide emissions, I doubt that reducing transportation for construction workers (in industrialized countries, I doubt that any construction "worker" in China or Arabia has a car...) has anywhere near the same impact as a 5% reduction in construction.
- jnurmine 8y ago
  "innovating existing technologies so that they become more efficient" But that is what 5G basically is, no? And no, I don't think I'm a "victim of the fallacy of eternal growth". System-wise, any system that relies solely on continuing growth to keep itself going is certainly brittle and will start to contract or collapse once the prerequisites of increased growth are disturbed, or removed. Furthermore, I don't think it is meaningful to abandon technological advancement just because some people think that people expect a global climate change deus ex machina from a university or corporate lab. On the contrary, technology can really help, and I don't mean this in a blindly religious sense. We need solutions which scale and we don't currently have them. The solutions won't appear out of thin air or by magical thinking, they have to be willed out of the laws of physics and chemistry and mathematics and so on. A good example is technology for capturing carbon dioxide at a price of under 100 USD a tonne. Add Fischer-Tropsch to that and you have fuel. The slight problem is that the system which produces these advancements and, more importantly, can scale them to planet-wide scales is precisely the system that feeds on "eternal growth". If one disturbs or destroys that system, possible beneficial solutions won't be able to spread to all corners of the planet, thereby hindering the adoption of an innovation that takes non-trivial components to build. To get out of that dilemma, the system must be transformed. Decentralization and distribution of for example manufacturing is required: once it's possible to print a functioning solar panel in your garage and use it to power your house, we're heading in the right direction. Also, it's not just one dimension of waiting for technological advancements. "Reduce consumption", farm your own food, use your computer only on weekends, never fly anywhere, these will also work.

fock 8y ago

When all thy mercies, oh my progress... I think you're a victim of the fallacy of eternal growth thaught for years by capitalist and communist economists alike (and even picked up by most green movements around the globe). If you realize that our consumption is way above it's sustainable limit, the only way to prove that we have really evolved from the barbarism of a pack of wolves is to try everything possible to fold back consumption into this limit. And since we start crossing some irreversibility thresholds, this means acting now. So we should start cutting consumption and innovate existing technologies so that they become more efficient, instead of increasing consumption and hoping (which roots back to religion – it's kind of interesting that in a time of the decline of classic, philosophical religions, most of the people have adopted blind trust into technology, which does not recognise hardship or offer any consolence in it) for some random technological breakthrough (which would then need years to be adapted on scale – of course we can still search (R&D is not that big of a polluter (except for nukes))). I really would like to see some calculations for "the bigger picture", which show that 5G and the entailing consumption frenzy will bring us nearer to a sustainable society. Practically for remote-controlled exvacators: why can't you just put a remote control-terminal ontop of the next fibre-"hub"? 5G (or at least the part, where you build small cells with high-frequency-bands) won't be deployed in Alaska anytime soon and this is something which you can easily add on todays infrastructure once you realize that it's actually beneficial. Maybe you should also take a step back on exvacation – with steel and concrete making up about 15% of carbon-dioxide emissions, I doubt that reducing transportation for construction workers (in industrialized countries, I doubt that any construction "worker" in China or Arabia has a car...) has anywhere near the same impact as a 5% reduction in construction.

jnurmine 8y ago
"innovating existing technologies so that they become more efficient" But that is what 5G basically is, no? And no, I don't think I'm a "victim of the fallacy of eternal growth". System-wise, any system that relies solely on continuing growth to keep itself going is certainly brittle and will start to contract or collapse once the prerequisites of increased growth are disturbed, or removed. Furthermore, I don't think it is meaningful to abandon technological advancement just because some people think that people expect a global climate change deus ex machina from a university or corporate lab. On the contrary, technology can really help, and I don't mean this in a blindly religious sense. We need solutions which scale and we don't currently have them. The solutions won't appear out of thin air or by magical thinking, they have to be willed out of the laws of physics and chemistry and mathematics and so on. A good example is technology for capturing carbon dioxide at a price of under 100 USD a tonne. Add Fischer-Tropsch to that and you have fuel. The slight problem is that the system which produces these advancements and, more importantly, can scale them to planet-wide scales is precisely the system that feeds on "eternal growth". If one disturbs or destroys that system, possible beneficial solutions won't be able to spread to all corners of the planet, thereby hindering the adoption of an innovation that takes non-trivial components to build. To get out of that dilemma, the system must be transformed. Decentralization and distribution of for example manufacturing is required: once it's possible to print a functioning solar panel in your garage and use it to power your house, we're heading in the right direction. Also, it's not just one dimension of waiting for technological advancements. "Reduce consumption", farm your own food, use your computer only on weekends, never fly anywhere, these will also work.