Digital Media: Is it Green?

At first it seems like common sense that because it reduces paper involved in media consumption, digital media presents a more environmentally friendly option. However MediaShift writer Don Carli shows in a recent arcticle how growing research and awareness has proved this idea to be a large misconception. While reducing paper consumption provides a popular and easy way to address the problem and certainly can have an impact, the industry needs to look at the facts and find a suitable balance between the use of paper and digital media.

The main problem concerning the massive consumption of digital media remains the mass amounts of energy required by data centers, computers and cellular networks. According to the U.S. Department of Energy data centers use more than 60 billion kilowatt hours-per-year, equal to the amount of electricity of 559,608 houses use in one year. A large portion of this energy comes from mountaintop-removal coal mining, a huge contributor to deforestation. Currently, data centers are connected to 600 square miles of deforestation caused by mountaintop-removal coal mining.

In addition to problems caused by direct energy consumption used to power digital media, massive amounts of energy are used to produce the technology that enable digital media. According to MIT researcher Timothy Gutowski, every one kilogram of plastic or metal part made for technologies such as cell phones, computers, or iPods requires as much energy as running a flat screen TV for one to 10 hours. Also, according to Greenpeace, e-waste caused by people throwing away cell phones, computers and iPods accumulates to around 20 to 50 million tons of trash yearly.

Certainly, there are many sides to this issue, however, I see very little the media can do about this issue. While Carli proposes that data centers could make a greater effort to run on sustainable biofuels, I do not think the responsibility lies within media industries alone. Rather, this issue points to a greater need for the government and all industries within the private sector to place a greater focus on developing sustainable energy alternatives. However, I do agree that as individuals, we need to be more responsible with our technological devices by using and updating them in a manner that will decrease the need for a new computer/iPod/smartphone every few years.

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Can Apple's Tablet Help Print Media?

With all the hype about one of Apple's latest gadgets, the Tablet, many people involved with print media are wondering how it will affect them. A lot of rumors have been flying about this new product, and according to a story in Business Week all that Apple has said officially is that it plans to release a "tablet-based device in early 2010." It would also have an advanced touch screen and be close to the size of a MacBook.

In a recent article posted by Vadim Lavrusik, he discusses his opinion on the Tablet. His hopes are that it will make mobile news more user friendly, force news publishers to become more innovative in their site design, and create a potential for users to be willing to pay for this new content. He fears though that many news businesses will not be quick enough to adapt to this technology and that publishers will try to use it to boost their print sales. We also must not forget that many users are not willing to pay much (or at all) for a lot of this content, so profits from these new mobile sites will not be very large.

Print media's history of accepting changes in technology has not been a good one. With the advent of the internet many of these companies did not see the importance of posting news articles online, and lost many younger readers because of it. We simply do not have the time or patience any longer to sit and read a newspaper. Slowly the news media has caught up, and newspapers like USA Today and even The Des Moines Register have Twitter feeds. If print media throws everything it has into creating more user-friendly and interactive sites for the technology in products like the Tablet I have no doubt that they will succeed in getting more tech-savvy readers, and maybe even profit from it.

As part of a new generation of media consumers that rarely picks up a newspaper, I am excited for this new technology. We want to not only read the news, but to be able to have pictures, video, and audio to go along with it. We want to be able to ask questions and have them be answered by the reporter or blogger quickly. We want to leave our own opinions about an article and comment on the opinions of others. If print media accepts this early enough they will be able to reconnect with a seemingly lost generation of news readers.

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