Week Notes 17/03/23
2023-03-17
This week has mostly been about me realising how many gaps there are in my own patterns of thinking, and exploring the relationship between technology and environmental impact.
Reading Every I Know about Life I Learned from Powerpoint made me rethink my assumptions about corporate software being bad and independent software being good, and content being more important than design.
On the latter point, in web development we often talk about progressive enhancement: focus on the core of what you need to say, or what you need to happen, and then layer visual or functional enhancements on top of that core, with those enhancements being available if the person visiting your site is able to use them. And I think it's important to differentiate that approach from an implicit puritanism about design or functionality. The core version of what you are delivering can still be beautiful, visually or functionally. And the enhancements can reflect a joyful wish to amplify that beauty.
Installing Fedora Linux on an old Dell laptop, and finding the whole installation process and desktop experience rather delightful, was also a joyful challenge to some ideas about operating systems, and indeed ways of working, that I had built up over years.
I've also been working back through the archive of the Environment Variables podcast hosted by the Green Software Foundation. Among the points I've picked up along the way:
- legislation is a key aspect of improving the environmental performance of green software, and government initiatives in some countries, notably France, are making quality improvements mandatory.
- data around the environmental performance of cloud providers is gradually improving, with Microsoft and Google making steady progress, though AWS have recently slipped back in recent months with key staff leaving their sustainability team
- and there was a really enjoyable (for me at least, as a lover of all things related to Orkney) podcast titled Community Clouds and Energy Islands with Dawn Nafus and Laura Watts about the relationship between de-centralised energy networks and the de-centralised internet, with Laura Watts talking specifically about energy projects on the Orkneys.
I'm thinking more and more about the relationship between web development and the energy transition and the climate/biodiversity emergency. At Careful Digital, we're looking at further improving the environmental performance of our web hosting, and of the software we produce. We're also looking to formalise this work through the B-Corp certification process.
That's all for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, see you next week!
The Intentional Technology Newsletter...
... will help you use technology with focus and enjoyment.