Comments on: The social smoke cloud

By: L.Shriniwas

L.Shriniwas — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:09:00 +0000

What you guys are doing here ??

You all are just putting your point right by turning your pcs and accelerasting carbon levels !! What is your objective of all this discussions/posting your thoughts here ?? Belive me, Actions always have some impacts then words..! There’s no need of any discussions or putting your thought perspective..Please Go and do some planting or farming rather thn discussing or showing your internet knowledge..! Its time for execution…What you all did as a part of any corrective actions ?

By: G.Chomic

G.Chomic — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:19:47 +0000

I’m somewhat tired of this hat. People may spend inordinate amounts of time on facebook (they do!) and facebook is rapidly on its way to its inevitable downfall anyhow… but that doesn’t make the carbon point more relevant.

The Internet runs whether or not we use it. The network infrastructure impact of a few more bytes is irrelevant. Further, I would be surprised if a significant percentage of home users really powersave or turn off their computers. Laptops? Definitely some. Desktops? Unlikely. In that case the ‘impact’ social networking in this sense is cast in a different light.

By: Dhawal Korani

Dhawal Korani — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:23:59 +0000

One more angle to previous post (if it can called so!): I was conversing with a friend of mine recently on the whole topic of human relationships. What came out of the discussion is something which I have been pondering about for while too. It is the importance of an individual to deal with one’s loneliness. Or rather I would put it, the ability to be emotionally independent of some one else – be it the other person’s opinion, company or interaction. I would call this emotional maturity. Why is this important in the context of the present discussion ?? I think it is because what we are dealing with here fundamentally is human behaviour. People wasting time (yes, I admit they and even I do too on SNW can also be an indicator of emotionally maturity. SNWs such as Facebook exploit this emotional dependence vulnerability that we all have to some degree by using tools such as “XYZ likes this”, or “Comments” or the insidious “What is in your mind ?” features. The latter one really is “I want to know what the world thinks of what I think” ! I guess this psychological angle complements the social determinism that “Being in Facebook is the ‘in thing’” that forces people to stay glued to SNW in an unwise manner.

By: Dhawal Korani

Dhawal Korani — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:38:10 +0000

The social networking ‘menace’ reflects the chief reason why the Internet itself has become popular -the urge to communicate and ‘stay in touch’ among humans. E-mail was (and I think still is) the most popular Internet service. Internet is what it is today because primarily it fulfils this very basic human need. The need of a man to be social, to connect and interact with one another, to feel a sense of solidarity with a social group or community. The popularity of social networking websites (SNW) reflects this very Durkhemian fact . Put it simply, intellectual reasoning will never ever be sufficient to pursuade people to stay away from social networking websites those carbon footprint green arguments notwithstanding! What is termed as ‘waste of time’ is in my opinion partially flawed perspective. I rather see this activity as something which enables people to overcome their loneliness however virtual that may seem. Of course, there are significant damaging features of SNW. The exposure of private data, the affect on real world relationships, the wastage of time (yes!) and the carbon footprint issue (yes – but the causality shown by the statistics does not mean that SNW are an irreplacable cause; before that it was Porn). In summary, your argument though illuminating, shows only one side of the story. Just like using electricity sensibly, it is upto us to use SNW sensibly. Blaming SNW is like blaming the Power station for generating electricity !

By: H

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:06:39 +0000

The following research shows that social networks have actially increased the overall time spent by users on the Internet by over 82% in the last one year. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_users_spend_more_time_on_social_networks_tha.php

By: alex

alex — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:24:31 +0000

This is really strange argument. Facebook is not only connects people. It also helps them to communicate. This saves tonnes of paper and emails sent and hours of communications by other means. Furthermore, will people turn off their computers if Facebook would not be used? I doubt. they will spent the computer time on surfing. Some, there is no extra energy spending, there is only people’s time allocation.

By: H

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:11:02 +0000

There is more happening on Facebook than just connecting people. The core issue is with people sticking on facebook for hours altogether waiting for things to happen! which is a cause of worry. Because not only people end up wasting their time but are using more electricity and thus adding to the carbon levels. 800 tonnes of green houses gases being added to the environment every second is going to lead us to hell. The Deutsche Bank Carbon counter at Manhattan, NY and http://www.know-the-number.com/ is telling the story loud!

By: Paul Griffin

Paul Griffin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:51:58 +0000

That is ONE argument, and defending Facebook is tough because most of what it does sereves no other purpose than enabling people to connect to one another. However, the argument FOR enabling people to connect more easily and more frequently does of course offer up the opportunity for people to comment and comments can lead to actions, actions can lead to groups forming and groups generally get things done so communication can equal Good Work!