With the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in mind, the classic question "To what degree are designers responsible for the (side)effects of their work?" suddenly becomes fashionably again. Finding the answer to this question is no rocket-science when a product is clearly intended to do harm, but in all other cases one can always find effects that can feed a firm discussion...
Let’s take "Cloud Computing" for example. Although it’s really convenient to be able to access your data everywhere you go, let’s think for a moment about the energy consumption of all these servers to make this happen. Although brainiacs work hard to create highly efficient systems (cloud computing can even save energy in some areas), one thing is for sure: data that is online accessible, constantly costs energy.
Unlimited storage = no worries?
Nevertheless, the Gmail startpage proudly presents the enormous amount of online storage that can be used to store ones e-mail. And it’s even better: it’s growing and growing! Deleting e-mail has become unnecessary! Although overall web analytics data is not available, it sounds like a save bet that the number of online stored e-mails that will never be opened again is enormous.
Although it’s not impossible to delete e-mail in the online e-mail interfaces of Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, it’s certainly not advocated. Off course this is no big surprise while the products should breath “Don’t worry about anything, happy usage”. But from an environmental friendly design point of view, a more clear delete button would be nice… Or Gmail e-mail that also can be dragged into a waste basket. Or add a “clean-up” functionality like in Windows “344 e-mails haven’t been viewed for at least 3 years, delete them?” Imagine the nice paperclip animation… ;)
Blackle?
While Googling on this subject, the Google search engine itself became a subject as well: “does the bright white Google page costs more energy than a pitch black version?”. Although it’s apparently “very designer” to dress in black, unfortunately using blackle.com on your laptop or TFT doesn’t save energy. But for CRT users: switch to Blackle, it works!.
And for all owners of online casino’s and people who try to sell incredible drugs that increase male performance by sending SPAM… Please read the CNET article on the Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report: “The mere act of people around the world deleting SPAM and searching for legitimate e-mail falsely labeled as junk creates the annual energy consumption equivalent in the U.S. of 2.4 million homes using electricity and the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas.”
So please…
... clean up or download your e-mail with Christmas to save some storage energy! And if you're planning to make deleting your e-mail one of your New Year's Resolutions... this Firefox plugin might be able to help you a little. Success!