I have to admit I have mixed feelings about much of the progress that mobility has made over the past couple of decades. On the one hand, mobility is all about going where the action is while remaining connected to the IT resources that make us productive. It's about improving customer service, lowering costs, and improving productivity. I don't think any of us would give up our mobile computing or communications tools without a fight. And yet, there are downsides to all of this.
The biggest pushback I get is in the fact that continuous connectivity can lead to working a lot more than in the past. It's therefore not just a case of being more productive, but rather being more productive more (often a lot more) often. This, however, is not a technological issue; it's a political question motivated by technology. It therefore needs to be solved with local politics (discussions with your boss, learning where the off button is, etc.) or more globally via legislation, although this hasn't happened yet (at least in the US) specifically with respect to mobility.
The other big issue, and this is, after all, Earth Day 2008, is environmental. I am not a rabid environmentalist; reducing the core argument here to its essence asserts mankind to be a plague upon the earth, and, if you believe purely in the sanctity of nature and the environment, then it's time to either voluntarily cast off the old mortal coil or accept what to most would be an unacceptably low standard of living. Let's face it, stuff powered by electricity makes life interesting and valuable for many of us. I don't want to go back to the stone age, pre-fire, just to save the planet. What's the point? But we do need a balance between an economy that raises standards of living, ideally for everyone, and one that pollutes the earth to the point that there's no longer any point.
And there is, regardless, a lot we can do to minimize the impact on the environment that results from mobility. The biggest problem is that mobility usually involves burning oil for transportation or power generation, and various toxic materials required for the manufacture of electronics. The airlines are doing their level best to convince us not to use their product, but we'll still have to from time to time. Get used to full planes and enough inconvenience that electronic conferencing will replace a good chunk of travel for many of us over the next few years - thereby moving the burning of oil from jet engines to power plants.
Good practice for us IT users, then, should include two key elements: minimizing power consumption, and also recycling old products. With respect to the former, much of the heavy lifting needs to be done by design engineers who can take advantage of low-power components, low-power designs, power-saving protocols, and other techniques like supercapacitors. Buy energy-efficient products, but it's also a good idea to simply shut off devices that aren't being used - including mobile devices. Needing to recharge batteries less often can also save energy.
With respect to recycling, there are two options. First, older equipment can be donated to charities, or can be re-purposed via software - for example, using VNC, thin-client software, or LINUX to make a thin client out an obsolete thick client that won't run newer Microsoft code. But all equipment eventually dies, and there's little point today in repairing it - repairs are expensive, assuming you can even get the parts required, and new products are cheaper, faster, and more reliable overall. So take dead electronics to a recycler (many electronics chains and office-supply stores have recycling drops) and let them do the work. Batteries deserve special attention: never throw any battery other than carbon-zinc and alkaline cells in the trash. All other batteries should always be recycled - no exceptions. And I also don't recommend recycling any storage device without physically destroying it first - such is just not worth the risk if sensitive information is involved. If you trust those security-erase utilities, fine, but I don't. Anything obsolete here that stores data (flash cards, USB keys, disk drives, etc.) gets hammered, literally, and the remains are recycled. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, a bonded recycler may be available in your area. But any device with a non-volatile memory deserves special consideration.
I'm convinced that we can all do a little, with very low impact on our day-to-day operations, to save energy (and a few bucks, I might add) and to minimize our impact on the planet. It shouldn't take a lot of effort, and it beats living in a cave.
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Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
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