2202
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] rchive@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Interestingly, better computer hardware is often actually less physical matter. What's valuable about computers isn't the amount of material, it's the arrangement of matter. That applies to both hardware and software. A phone and that same phone smashed have the same number of atoms. That phone and an equivalent from 10 years earlier are pretty close in number of atoms. My monitors and TVs today are a tenth as many atoms as the ones I had years ago.

[-] lugal@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Buying a phone every year is still about five times the matter of buying a phone every five years. Also: it is quite cynical to count atoms while children work in cobalt mines. The question of resources is more complex.

[-] rchive@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

The matter from previous phones can just be recycled. We don't really do it now because we're nowhere near the growth limit OP was hypothesizing, but if it really came to it we'd mine our landfills instead of mountains.

Talking about children is changing the subject, important as that may be. We're talking about finite materials.

this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
2202 points (92.8% liked)

Microblog Memes

5911 readers
1310 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS