Coming back to green tech, I have discussed the benefits of text
based browser such [as
[Lynx](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)),
[Elinks](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks) or
[w3m](
http://w3m.sourceforge.net/) and how they have a variety of
benefits.
----
Aside from stripping useless cruft and ads from most modern web
pages and providing easily readable content, the not so obvious
byproduct is perhaps some measure of energy savings in reducing cpu
work to parse and display a given web page. If the browser is run
from virtual machine that one can connect with via a secure shell,
the heavy lifting and parsing of the page is performed at the vm and
plain ascii is transported to the client machine thus also reducing
the energy foot print (to a certain degree) of transporting said web
page. Not exactly an ideal scenario, but it is a start. There is a
[small but growing concern among some in the web development
community
that:](
http://gauthierroussilhe.com/en/posts/convert-low-tech)
>1. The trend towards digital overconsumption is not sustainable
>with regard to the supply of energy and materials it requires. Too
>much energy demand, too much electricity consumed, increase in
>emissions GHG, explosion of video uses and multiplication of
>terminals, the digital transition is placed in cantilever of the
>social and ecological transition.
2. The energy intensity of the
>digital industry is increasing globally, unlike the energy
>intensity of world GDP . For example, the direct energy consumption
>caused by a euro of digital industry has increased by 37% compared
>to 2010 (1€ of Cloud services consumes 37% more energy than in
>2010). To make it clear, the relative efficiency allowed by the
>digital industry is only because we inject more and more energy in
>the system.
3. Current digital consumption is highly polarized.
>Developed countries overconsume digital services and investment in
>digital industry has no clear effect on GDP to this date. 4. The
>environmental impact of the digital transition becomes manageable
>if it is more sober. We can rely on existing energy to curb the
>increase in energy consumption and try to stabilize related GHG
>emissions.
Bottom line, we are in an unsustainable digital energy trajectory
particularly in recent years with video streaming. In a very small
way, using a text based browser does mitigate the consumption of
energy to a certain degree, we are offloading the heavy parsing and
processing of a web page to a vm or cloud based server which, in a
way, is a bit of a cheat. I think there may be some net energy
savings in that once the requested page has been processed, all that
is required to be delivered is plain text to the client machine thus
reducing the energy required to transport the data. The added
benefit is the client machine can be a legacy machine since its only
requirement is to display plain ascii. We can hope web developers
will step up to the plate in greater numbers to address this growing
concern, but ultimately, the future energy market is going to
dictate the future of the internet. There is an added wrinkle that
[the internet does not make economic
sense.]
(
https://web.archive.org/web/20150430020001/http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/)
Technical feasibility and economic feasibility do not necessarily go
hand in hand.
As time marches on and energy becomes a more precious commodity, the
Gopher Protocol may see a resurgence simply because of its
simplicity and very low energy consumption which is why I also post
this content to my Gopher space. Coming back to the energy
consumption and the carbon footprint of the modern web, this site
scored fairly well on the [web site carbon
calculator](
https://www.websitecarbon.com/):
Tags: gopher-protocol, energy, computing, climate-change
