[Arm-netbook] Take responsibility for electronic-waste disposal : Nature News & Comment

Wed Aug 24 18:56:17 BST 2016

nature magazine might not like a comment that's actually longer than
the paper which was presented by peer-reviewed scientist, so i'm
posting a copy here.

I've been analysing this situation for some time and have decided to
take responsibility for it by designing computing appliances that have
an extended lifecycle through reuse and repair.  The full whitepaper
which partly explains the strategy is here
http://www.rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/ and
(yes, Nature, I am aware of your policy on links, yes I read the terms
and conditions, no I am not a "Corporation", no I am not "promoting",
i am providing evidence that there is actually someone who is
*actually* taking responsibility for tackling this - me - from a
different perspective, but i can also tell you *right now* that very
very few people in the world are) it's actually going ahead at an
early phase on http://crowdsupply.com right now (yes, Nature, the
campaign will have ended by the time most people read this).

My view on the author's perspective is that although it is necessary,
it doesn't actually solve the root cause of the problem.  The root
cause of the problem is that electronics are *designed* for
obsolescence.  Why would we do this to ourselves?? Well, it's very
simple: we are selfish at heart: we want to spend as little money as
possible.  So we push the price down, using the tactic of "shopping
around".  Corporations listen to this (they try to avoid it by setting
up Cartels on the components, or other tricks such as whitelisting of
internal peripherals using DRM locking) but ultimately they have to
listen to you, and compete with you for your money. That leaves very
little margin for profits, so Corporations compete based on providing
us with the bare minimum for the bare minimum.

The consequence of *that* is that, as an Industry, in order to stay in
business, Corporations have to make sure that the products will fail,
so that next year you will buy another one, so that they can stay in
business for another year, and another year, and thus continue to
exist *at all*.  I remember hearing stories from the 1950s about
companies designing "durables" instead of "consumables" - vacuum
cleaners and wrenches that were so high quality that nobody needed to
buy another one from them, and the company that made them went out of
business!

Knowing this to be the case - knowing this to be the world-wide
situation on a massive scale - how can we *possibly* propose that
*disposal* of the electronics could actually 100% solve such a massive
problem?  My feeling is that all it will do is open up black market
opportunities for Mafia and Triads (depending on country of origin),
giving them a fantastic new way to make money by offering cheaper
"recycling" options than the 2% to 5% proposed by the authors.  and
you know where those will actually end up.

Now, being a lot less harsh, it has to be said that even *any* attempt
to reduce e-waste is definitely a good thing, especially now that the
concentrations of rare earth metals is *higher* in landfill sites than
it is in the original mines from where they were extracted.

My view - one which I've stated that I am *actively* taking
responsiblity for by working on it for the past five years to get to
its current crowd-funded phase - is that we need to design computing
appliances that can be re-used.  That means creating hardware
standards (open ones, unlike Google Project ARA which in *no way* can
be said to be open) where the main "computing" part is actually a
general-purpose tiny robustly-packaged computer that can be
transferred from device to device.

If the main computer is packaged in a small robust form-factor that
can be transferred from device to device (or more accurately housing
to housing or Dock to Dock) then older computing modules *can* be
re-purposed, by giving them to the kids, or to friends, or to charies
that will find uses for them, or sold on ebay for other people to
re-purpose them in electronics or low-power co-located "server"
scenarios (google "raspberry pi colocated hosting" for details on this
concept) and many other scenarios, the ultimate end result of which is
that the computing modules are kept in service indefinitely.

And if the "housings" (aka "Docking Stations") are designed to be
*repaired* rather than thrown away.... by providing people with
instructions online.... then the "Housings" can be kept out of
landfill indefiniteiy.  How many people do you know who have "waited
for the contract period to expire on their phone" then THROWN AWAY a
perfectly functional device which happens to have a single cosmetic
blemish?  that is just *so* irresponsible and morally reprehensible it
makes me want to shake people until their teeth rattle... but because
there aren't yet any alternative products for me to tell them to go
and buy instead, I have had to take the puzzling step of deciding to
take responsibility for *designing* modular computing appliances!

The sad fact remains though that the average mass-volume manufacturer
is stuck and will remain trapped in the endless hermetically-sealed
cycle of "designed for obsolescence".  I've even spoken to the CEO of
one of them: he told me flat-out that "Modular Computing is
unprofitable".  I understand why he came to that conclusion: I happen
not to agree with it.  My feeling is that he was underestimating how
many people there are in the world that want modular products, and
this is borne out by Dave Hakkan's "Phonebloks" concept.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has any other ideas that
could help slow down e-waste to manageable levels, such that
world-wide we have the time and resources to undo the damage caused by
landfill sites.

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
> iinteresting
> ---
> crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 1:07 PM, Alexander Ross
> <maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me> wrote:
>> http://www.nature.com/news/take-responsibility-for-electronic-waste-dis
>> posal-1.20345?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
>>
>>
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