On Sunday, the UK’s Times reported that performing two Google [GOOG] searches uses about as much energy as a kettle takes to boil. But Google says that estimate is inflated. Alex Wissner-Gross, the Harvard scientist quoted in the …
On Sunday, the UK’s Times reported that performing two Google [GOOG] searches uses about as much energy as a kettle takes to boil. But Google says that estimate is inflated. Alex Wissner-Gross, the Harvard scientist quoted in the Times, says that singling out Google was the paper’s agenda, not his, and that the publication made up its figures. Can anything be learned from this journalistic debacle?
The Times article purports to reveal the “environmental impact” of Googling stuff, and quotes a scientist from the Berkeley National Laboratory as saying that “Data centres [sic] are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable.”
Also, the article cites a bit of Gartner [IT] research saying that the global IT industry creates about as much CO2 as the airline industry — equivalent to about 2%. Two percent? The worldwide cattle industry creates about 9% of the world’s CO2, and in the U.S., buildings create about 12% of the CO2 released. Perhaps the Times should consult Harvard physicists on cows and buildings, those other great menaces to society. And of course server farms are energy-intensive; but imagine the energy that would be required to print, house and maintain all that data on paper, microfiche, or floppy disks.
Google has responded by touting its green initiatives through Google.org, its philanthropy, and its other enviro-friendly practices like using biodiesels shuttles and bicycles on its campuses. Greenpeace has also come to its defense, saying that Google is a foremost lobbyist for green energy in Washington. The search giant has also addressed the technical data cited in the Times by saying that while the energy required for searches vary depending on the obscurity of the query, most require about as much energy as the human body consumes in 10 seconds.
But the actual carbon cost of a Google search doesn’t really matter. What’s most important about the Times article, and its rebuttals, is that they highlight that there will be more dialogues about the energy costs of the information age — regardless of who makes up what figures.
Most Internet users are aware that their PC is sucking power from the wall, but probably never stop to consider that what they do with that PC can have an impact on their personal carbon footprint. Sure, we’ve learned to turn off the lights before leaving the house. But when will it become ingrained in us that playing World of Warcraft, with its processor-intensive graphics, or watching Hulu videos, which requires heavy server interaction, has a higher energy cost than tapping out a Word document?
It’s arguable that awareness is the entire point of the green movement — not of grams of carbon, but the consciousness that everything requires energy, that energy has to come from somewhere, and that its sources create byproducts that are often nasty. It’s this school of thought that will allow us to deal with the real menace: not the paltry 2% of CO2 that IT creates now, but the 5x, 10x or 1000x scenarios we’ll be faced with in 50 or 100 years. The Times quotes a figure reporting that there are 200 million Web searches conducted in one day on earth. That’s all? What happens when the third world gets Internet access, and the first world has it on every mobile phone? Why are we talking about grams of CO2 when we should be talking about systemic strategy?
Think back to the heyday of the drive-in burger joint in the 1950s, when no one considered the cost of using cars for every daily task. Now we realize the folly of that era. Eventually, we’ll get a reign on the idea that computers require the same discretion. But only if we quit arguing about the minutiae — miles per gallon, or the price of gas — and focus on infrastructural solutions and forward-thinking legislation.
Sure, the Times might have been sensationalist in its eagerness to single out Google. But its point stands: the Internet is reliant on resources that carry heavy costs, and our profligate Web usage may not be sustainable for the next generation of users. So watch your Hulu videos without guilt while you still can; come 2025, you might find yourself getting taxed for carbon usage.
A quest to reproduce a mammoth’s voice led a student on an incredible data-collecting journey to piece together bits of information from all corners of science.
Scientists employ all sorts of techniques to introduce us to extinct animals in the context of a museum, but for the most part, those techniques are largely visual. We usually don’t get to learn how they smelled, for example, or how their skin felt, ignoring a whole range of senses during what should be a transformative experience. Filling in those gaps is the quest of Royal College of Art grad student Marguerite Humeau, who became fascinated with the idea of creating reproductions of the vocal tracts of extinct animals to bring them back to life through sound.
As she embarked upon her research, she learned a curious fact about the recovery of extinct animals: Because the vocal tract is made of soft tissue, it does not fossilize. The data she was looking for, like 3-D scans of the vocal tract and windpipe, simply did not exist. “When I discovered that, it became a personal obsession. I had to recreate this data in some way,” she tells Co.Design.
For six months, Humeau studied with paleontologists, zoologists, veterinarians, engineers, explorers, surgeons, ear and throat specialists, and radiologists — over 100 specialists — in an effort to recreate the chords of a Mammoth Imperator, an ancestor of the better-known woolly mammoth. For the resonance cavities, for example, she had to get a CT scan of a relative: a modern-day Asian elephant. For the windpipe and lungs, she spoke to elephant vocalization specialists. In the end, Humeau was able to build a massive compilation of data that did not exist before her research, she says. “I created bridges between areas of science which normally would not be related.”
The larynx was most difficult, as the bones surrounding it were unlikely to be found together, in their original spatial arrangement, on the same fossil. Humeau met with Martin Birchall, a professor of laryngology who performed the first larynx transplant ever in California a few months ago. In a fascinating twist, Birchall told her that the woman who received the transplant actually recovered her own voice, proving his theory that the larynx is just a sound generator. “What makes your voice so specific is the way you shape the air in your lungs, and the way it resonates in your mouth, and nasal cavity,” says Humeau. Following Birchall’s advice, Humeau didn’t copy an existing larynx, rather, she created one from scratch that delivered the best sound.
In fabricating the vocal tract, the work required a tremendous amount of guesswork, and this is where she let the design process take over. In the end, she had a vocal tract that not only created the most authentic (she hoped) sound, but also had produced a piece of sculpture that indeed looks like a trumpeting mammoth. Humane used the help of a 3-D milling machine to bring her creations to life, and connected the chords to an air compressor and subwoofer-powered “voice.” The Mammoth Imperator chords were featured as the project “Back, Here, Below, Formidable” at the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions show. When she first heard the sound they produced in the hall, Humeau was overwhelmed, she says. “When you are in the exhibition space, you can feel the sound, the bass in your chest.” Humeau also collected her voluminous writings and documentation on her website, and produced a book.
Working alongside these ancient giants has been a humbling experience, says Humeau, which was confirmed when she met with Bernard Buigues, the French explorer who found several baby woolly mammoths and one adult, which he named Jarkov, frozen in the Siberian permafrost. Buigues told her about the experience of being so close to such well-preserved specimens — how he could see the entire creature’s hair, flesh, skin, and even smell it. “It was so exciting to me because I was trying to achieve this: not only recreating the sound but also feeling the beast’s physical presence again,” says Humeau. “He had had this experience with the now-extinct woolly mammoth.”
But she isn’t purely interested in our elephant ancestors. Humeau also made a reproduction of another vocal tract that humans might be able to relate to more: that of the famous Lucy, also known as the first hominid.