Re: replacement of computers … One look at the work of photographer Chris Jordan is a convincing argument that we replace too much as a matter of practice. As with all of the other persuasive statistics and measures you used in your talk Friday, disposal is something that should be considered an archaic paradigm to be re-evaluated.

Replacement isn’t inevitable, at least not in the way we do it currently. As long as you are inviting computer scientists to re-think the way we put the devices and software together, we need to make sure we are (a) considering other options to disposal as part of the design, and (b) not compounding a problem by encouraging obsoletion.

I very much enjoyed the talk. It was a great start to the new series of talks. Thanks for making the trip south.

As far as replacement of computers go, they are going to be replaced eventually in any case. So, do we replace them when their time is up with small evolutionary versions of what we have now, or revolutionary versions that let us do something new? That isn’t making light of the waste stream, but simply acknowledging that it will exist no matter what.