There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing… Eric Schmidt (Google CEO)

Image released under the Creative Commons by comedy_nose on Flickr.

For reference an exabyte is 1 billion gigabytes (about 4 billion of the latest laptops). Every digital click creates a trail of information: analytics tracking, server logs, browsing history, search history, previous purchases and recommendations. Add this to the content we choose to share: photos, articles, blogs, emails, instant messages, texts, Facebook Likes, Tweets, Diggs, Stumbles etc etc and the result is a vast quantity of data being stored throughout the world, every second of every day.

By 2013 the quantity of information on the Internet will double roughly every 72 hours. Aaron Endre

This will inevitably lead us to a couple of quite serious problems. The first is how we choose, find or filter the content we consume and the second is the environmental impact of storing, transferring and keeping all this data.

Content Consumption

You have to wonder if  the solution to this will be generating less content or finding new ways to filter it. Google are in a good position with search but there are many situations where search does not make sense. For instance on Twitter where you follow people who interest you but you may not always be interested in everything being said. This is the same for RSS applications. I subscribe to a large number of blogs and more often than not I am only interested in a just few of the posts each day. I have to scan through 100′s of articles to find the ones that really interest me.

Largely this problem can be solved with smarter technology. Personalised search, bookmarks and social graphs can be used to generate some very powerful tools. Its more likely we will build these tools and continue to generate obscene amounts of content. But should we?

The Green Issue

We were recently asked to consider joining a list of green agencies on Re-nourish. While we would love to be listed, in light of the above, can we really be a green company? We have over 8 terrabytes of storage space in the toggle office (not all of its used). All of our data is backed up here and across the internet to distant corners of the globe. We tweet, we blog and we share photos. We have handfuls of accounts across different web services. Each of these services generate more data for both us and our clients. Our server gets backed up in three different places and each and every web site we host gets larger month after month; using more bandwidth, more storage and more electricity.

How can we start to improve this?

Website Performance

Last week we began a new phase of website performance testing. We are now keeping a closer eye on ping times, load times and uptime’s of our sites and server. On top of this we are investigating WordPress and website performance gains. We have managed to decrease the load time of this site by around 3 seconds for the homepage and we will continue to make improvements on this over the coming month. Improved website performance not only reduces the strain on bandwidth, storage and electricity, it also increases conversions, user satisfaction and search engine performance. It’s certainly a worthy endeavour.

Say Less

When you say less, you get noticed more. There are a couple of blogs that I subscribe to that only post a handful of articles each year. The strange thing is I nearly always read them from start to finish. When they do arrive in my RSS reader it’s a real treat. The quality of the content is far more important than the quantity.

There are many blogs (that I will not name) that are quite obviously writing pointless articles aimed at search engine performance and riding current trends. These articles are getting easier to spot and are appearing more frequently. At some point the value of the things we share will have to be put under scrutiny (a completely separate issue).

Account Control

How many different usernames and passwords do you have? Which services are they for and are they necessary? We have always kept a list of the accounts we have. The list is useful to remember the variations of our username (toggle, toggleuk, togglelabs etc). The list has become even more useful though as we are now going to start closing any account that has not been used for a year. This should help curb the amount digital waste coming from toggle HQ and stop it extending into infinity. In short; close your old accounts. You remember that MySpace profile and Friends Reunited account? Delete them!

So, I’m about to hit “publish” and I can’t help but feel a little more digitally plump from the impending avalanche that is about be sent your way… and it’s not like the delete key can save us now with its over forgiving, trash can, revision saving, are you sure? Nature.

I like to think that the web is an extremely creative place and that the reason for this is the lack of restriction. We are free to say, share and create whatever takes our fancy. This leads to great ideas being shared across the planet in almost real time. Ideas that are life changing. Ideas that are fascinating. Ideas that are controversial. Ideas that are worth spreading.

Image released under the Creative Commons license by eflon on Flickr.

The Digital Economy Bill is a complex beast. It is long. It is boring. And the people responsible for drafting it like it that way. Within its many pages are clauses that will have detrimental effect to the Internet as we know it. The big show stopper is this:

Section 17: Power to amend copyright provisions.

The Secretary of State may by order amend Part 1 or this Part for the purpose of preventing or reducing the infringement of copyright by means of the internet, if it appears to the Secretary of State appropriate to do so having regard to technological developments that have occurred or are likely to occur…

I am no lawyer or politician, but here is my translation: If passed, the Digital Economy Bill will allow the Secretary of State to change copyright law at any time without requiring consent from other members of parliament. These changes can be made under the guise of “reducing copyright infringement on the internet”. That is a big deal.

The Digital Economy Bill is shaped by industry insiders (record companies, copyright bodies) and has been drafted without public opinion. It exists to protect the interests of business and not people. Imagine for one second that laws were created in the same way Wikipedia articles are written. Everyone with Internet access (and everyone should have internet access) could shape the bill and provide feedback. That is a powerful idea and would be an example of true democracy. The Digital Economy Bill is step in the wrong direction. We should be embracing new technology as a way of driving change. Instead we have big industries refusing to to create new business models and putting pressure on the Government as a result. Under this bill these businesses will pressure the Government into shaping copyright law in a way that only benefits them. Ouch.

If toggle chose not support a new super duper web standard, we would probably go out of business. People would say “you should have changed”, “its competition” and “that’s business”. They are right. Based on that same logic the record companies should either change or go out of business. Either way I think the artists (the ones who actually understand creativity) would be better off.

Now is your chance to say and do something about it, we don’t have long:

• Step 1: Read Fellow Creative’s post on the issue. You’ll find an example letter in the comments.
• Step 2: Email your local MP.
• Step 3: Call your local MP.
• Step 4: Attend a Pirate Party UK meetup.
• Step 5: Watch this Ted talk on creativity & copyright.
• Step 6: Add the Twibbon to your Twitter profile – you can use the widget to the right.
• Step 7: Pass/remix/share/talk this message to others.

On the eve of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, we also have other important issues to address. These two issues are not completely unrelated. We need a platform like the internet to share ideas on tackling climate change. We need to address climate change so the Internet still exists. December 2010 is our chance to make some noise. Lets not miss it.

A new trend for storing our data is emerging. Its known as Cloud computing. With the Cloud, our data is stored in highly efficient data centres that allow us to access our data from any internet connected device. Some services you may use that are built on this technology are:

• Google Mail & Google Documents
• Spotify
• Dropbox
• MobileMe
• Amazon.co.uk

Cloud computing has for the most part been seen as a greener way to serve and store data. It is all about efficiency. With a data centres built for one purpose we can achieve higher levels of energy efficiency and improved performance. The Cloud also benefits from scalability – a reason why it has become so popular among web start-ups.

On the face of it this all sounds very positive but I cannot help feel we are making the same mistakes that we have made in the past. Lets compare Cloud computing to Monocropping. With Monocropping we produce one single crop in abundance, that’s our data centre. We then ship that crop from the fields, to a distribution centre and from there to the supermarket. That is the internet. We then head to the supermarket and bring it home, that’s our ISP and home computer. So what is wrong with that? Surely this process is at the core of the internet?

The problem is that its completely inefficient. Lets pick on Spotify. Rather than have a song stored locally on my computer I have to stream that song to me wherever I go. The bandwidth and computing power required to do that for every single song I own would soon add up. Rather than the data travelling from the hard drive of my machine to the speakers, it has to travel half way across the planet. Any efficiency gain made at the data centre is instantly lost with the constant shipment of 0′s and 1′s to and from the cloud to my machines. Multiply this by every internet user and I cannot help feel the cloud (at least for some applications) is a step in the wrong direction.

All is not lost though. To improve efficiency of the Spotify example above we could all delete our digital music. This would instantly free up a huge amount of computing power and storage space. If this save of computing power could be put to good use (rather than end up as e-waste) we might just be onto something. Essentially we would have one library of digital music that the entire planet accesses on demand. I quite like that idea.

The problem is, we love our data. We are married to it. We make backups of backups and get extremely upset when it gets deleted. Cheap technology allows us to hoard and save anything we wish – no matter how pointless or redundant. On this computer I have files that are over five years old. I never look at them and yet I am compelled to keep hold of them (and back them up).

These questions need to be considered before we rush ahead at the rate technology carries us. Before every major technology shift we must ask if our climate and environment can sustain it. My CD’s are dusty, my cassette tapes are in the bin and in the end – its just music (to a fat cats ears).

I’m sitting at my desk looking at a magazine spread full of graphs. All these graphs follow a trend of low to high – ie the line keeps moving upwards. Think about life, it’s full of climbing graphs:

• Life expectancy – people are living longer, diagnosis and treatment of disease has improved
• Temperature – warmer temperatures should lead to more vitamin D!
• Wealth – we’re all getting richer which means we have the money available to consume more – holidays, food, property, clothing, cars, gadgets, fuel
• Population – we find strength in numbers
• Profits – more sales, more money, more staff, more offices, more investment, bigger bonuses, higher salary

If everything’s on the up, this can only be a good thing, right?

The problem with this trend is that’s just not sustainable. What goes up must come down. By striving to be always on the up, we are setting ourselves up for an inevitable down. There will be a point where this line is going to start falling again.

Take population growth as an example. In the early stages of humans ‘arriving’ on earth, the best way to ensure survival was in numbers. In the early stages, humans were just a tiny spec on the planet. We dug wells, harvested small areas of vegetation, channeled rivers, dug mines and used the resources around us to build shelter. The more we reproduced, the more resources we needed to sustain ourselves. We started to turn meadows into fields to grow food. We chopped down areas of forest and mined raw materials to build homes. Over time, fields have been concreted over to build an airports, housing and cities. And he we sit at the crest of the peak!

If we continue at our current rate of consumption, we are going to run out of land suitable for farming, land for building houses and vegetation to soak up carbon dioxide. But the problem is we can’t put anymore ‘in’ and as a result we can’t get anymore ‘out’.

So what should sustainability look like?

A straight line.

Why not a circle?

A circle in theory is the perfect image of sustainability. But, a circle assumes we can start again from the beginning – when we draw a circle, we are connecting one point to another, the end to the beginning. A straight line has a beginning but has the capacity to continue forever. In order for the line to stay straight, we must put in what we take out – and this is truly sustainable.

Continuing our thoughts on population, we must find a way to control the rate at which people are born. Without such measures, our planet will not have enough resources to sustain us all.

Whilst browsing through a recent copy of Adbusters (July/August 2009) in our local magazine shop, it fell open on a single page article entitled “thinking the unthinkable”. The article, written by Tim Jackson sets the tone for our Blog Action Day posts:

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2010.

This extraordinary ramping up of the global economy has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology we depend on for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that – financial crisis aside – growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our well-being.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People loose their jobs and sometime their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less that $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems we depend on for survival. It has failed spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods.

Today we find ourselves faced with the imminent end of the era of cheap oil; the prospect (beyond the recent bubble) of steadily rising commodity prices; the degradation of forests, lakes and soils; conflicts over land use, water quality and fishing rights; and the momentous challenge of stabilizing concentrations of carbon in the global atmosphere. And we face these tasks with an economy that is fundamentally broken, in desperate need of renewal…

A message this clear needs little summary. Solving these issues must become a global priority.

Last week was WorldView Impact’s 2 year anniversary and to celebrate we had a presentation and some drinks at the space. As part of this event, toggle bought some rubber trees in Sri Lanka. Each tree cost £15 – which is enough to cover the cost of planting and maintaining the tree for 35 years!

And why did we buy rubber trees you might be asking?

Worldview are working towards creating sustainable livelihoods for the poor with green business and at the same time, mitigating climate change.

One of their projects is a non-emission rubber tree plantation (powered by renewable energy) in Sri Lanka, which is where the trees we purchased will be planted.

Aims of the project:

• Provide good working conditions
• Give ownership shares to workers
• To provide communities with basic health and housing standards
• Create knowledge that can be shared with local communities
• Ease pressure on remaining rainforests
• Reduce carbon

To learn more about the project or buy some rubber trees, visit Worldview Impact »

The main downfalls

Banking

As you all know, when you open a bank account you have forms to sign, you get posted pin codes, terms and conditions for banking, welcome packs, banking cards, cheque books, paying in books, login details for online banking, further reading for services you may need in the future, paperwork to close your old account – and all this information arrives in paper envelopes! About 3 months ago we decided to move bank accounts. Wading through old paperwork and replacing it with the new, really made us realise just how much waste paper banking generates.

Inland Revenue

We regularly receive information from the Inland Revenue (a copy of the same information is also sent to our accountant) about VAT , pay etc which usually comes in the form of an A4 envelope with a letter and a CD in a cardboard sleeve.

The need to get creative

Sometimes you just need to work on paper.

When given a brief I like to sketch. My head is full of ideas and I need to get them down visually and as quickly as possible. I find this much easier than jumping straight on the computer because it’s easy to get caught up with details rather than idea generation.

Useful tools and services

CD recycling

London Recycling service operate free CD and DVD recycling. All you have to do is post your box of CD’s and they do the rest,

“The CD material is delivered to the decollaion centre where the constituent parts are separated. Paper is baled, pulped and used in the production of cardboard. The jewel case is granulated and then fed into an extrusion system fitted with a laser filter for contaminant removal. A high quality Crystal Polystyrene pellet is produced and may be used for new cases or insulating foam. The discs are processed in another machine and paint, aluminium and data is removed from the surface. This is used to insulate electric cables.The clean discs are granulated, blended and compounded into a polycarbonate material. This is reused to make burgular alarm boxes or street lighting.”

Google Docs

We make full use of Gmail, Google Docs and the Google Calendars on a daily basis. The great thing about the apps is the collaboration; sharing not only between ourselves but with our clients too. Clients can just paste their content into a Google Doc which saves sending it on CD.

PDFs

Generating PDF rather than paper proposals and invoices wherever possible.

Not getting company stationery printed

We decided very early on not to get company stationery (letterheads and compliment slips) printed. One of the main reasons for this was that we were going to try and make use of as many digital services as possible to save on paper. There were also budget reasons – to get even simple stationery printed would have taken a large chunk out of our budget as there are minimum sheet orders.

Instead we bought some good quality paper and just print them as and when we need them. We will be moving offices in a few weeks (more details coming soon) and we are very glad we didn’t get them printed because we have sent less than 20 letters in 18 months of business.

Moo minicards

Moo minicards are only 70mm x 28mm compared to the standard business card size of 80mm x 55m. Using minicards instead of standard business cards means we are using half the amount of materials per business card. Why are business cards so big!?!

Dropbox

Dropbox is a tool that enables you to sync and large files across the internet and computers. Dropbox has proved an invalauble tool here because it means we can share large files (like video) with our clients without the use of CD’s and DVD’s.

Reuse

Reusing old printouts for sketching on.

Conclusion

Anyone who claims to be paper free probably isn’t. How can you stop post coming through your door? Although we aren’t completely paper free, we are using as many tools as possible to continually reduce the amount of paper we consume at toggle HQ.