WHERE, INDEED?
It could sound very much like the lyrics from an inquiring song we all sang back in the fifties.”Where do old computers go?”Long time, a-....”
We are shedding PC's. - desk top, lap and palm - at a steady rate now. They become obsolete before you really get used to using any one of them. In Tokyo some University folks who figure out such important things have shared with the world at large the astounding facts which they have uncovered after much diligence - that it - by their figures, at least, mind you, that it takes about ten times the weight of the finished computer in fossil fuels and chemicals to make one.
Remember that then next time you jet halfway to nowhere to march in protest against improper use of fossil n and droplets of our limited water supplies. Have some gaudy posters printed; some films made and be ready to let everyone know they will need 22 kilograms of chemicals, 240 kilograms of fossil fuels and fifteen-[hundred (that's l,500 kilograms) of water ah-so-pure to make one computer. Don't specify which one, of course, and keep everything in ”kilograms”,too - which sounds more university-like. Most eager co-marchers will think they heard “gallons”and “pounds” anyway.
Be ready to contrast something quickly before people begin to ask questions about how such figures are were “Arrived At”. The same authorities claim they know it takes only twice the weight of the latest model car to make one just like it. Refrain from mentioning that the computer weighs -well, whatever it does when you lift it from one place to another, whereas the car weighs in at least a ton or so. 2X=computer. 10X=car. car. One way of coming up with such figures is to decide what you want them to be and “survey” to make it come out that way.
Used computer are becoming a familiar item to be seen at junk yards and landfills across the nation. The problem at many such locations used to be used refrigerators and freezers, but keyboard clutter has replaced that long-staying nemesis, along with all the related problems such disposal methods entail. What about all those valuable metals - gold, silver, ti-this and twa-that - which will seep into soil, enter the nation's waterways and strike bolts of terror to earthworm cultures around the globe?
The computer is the major tool of our time,and future historic digs into our landfill sites will marvel at how we got along with such simpled mechanisms. They may well wonder,too, why we apparently did not like them and junked them in garbage sites. It may well seem to have been because Man at that time (ours) had not found way to profit from reclaiming materials he had used in the making of his machines. We read reports claiming that sent per cent of such materials are being reclaimed in some areas. It is highly unlikely that we will see improvement in such eco-measures, since the machine of today is being presented more and more as a throw-away item It is less expensive to replace an ailing computer than to pay for “parts and labor”- a term which has become about as meaningless -or meaningful - as “Shipping & Handling Extra.”
` My first computer was one discarded for a newer model. My first printer was literally from a local junk yard were a dozen or so units have been dumped by a major manufacturing firm. My oldest son bought three of them and made a good one out of the trio of derelicts.
The next time you pass your local trash dumpster glance inside to get the picture. Most of the time you will see signs of our computer world in progress. There will be a discarded keyboard or two, perhaps computer parts or a battered hand-held unit, or empty cartons bearing the logo showing it, at one time, conveyed a wonderful magic box to some eager upgrader.
We will, I think, continue to build new “Mount Trashmores” studded with computer parts until some one finds a profit motive in reclamation and restoration. Since my first TS-80 the industry has been in a fluid condition. A time of standardization is always being promised but plans for tomorrow's computers are “yesterday's' in the designer's advanced thinking .
A.L.M. November 24, 2004 [731wds]
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