James Mathewson is the editor in chief of ibm.com. His main job involves setting ibm.com content quality standards (http://w3-03.ibm.com/standards/internet/writing/) and running programs to educate and encourage the IBM community to adopt the standards. Prior to joining IBM, James was the editor in chief of ComputerUser for six years. There he wrote an online column called Relevents (http://www.computeruser.com/archives/cu/relevents_index.html) and a print column called Insights (http://www.computeruser.com/archives/cu/insights_index.html), in addition to commissioning and editing all other content. This blog is a continuation of the Relevents column. In it, James explores how digital technology can be used to help tackle the great challenges facing humans on Planet Earth.

What is your carbon footprint?

I want to assert that each of us needs to take personal responsibility when it comes to the carbon dioxide and other gasses that are emitted by our activities. These activities constitute our carbon footprint: The quantity of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere as a result of our transportation, housing, food and work on this planet. Amid rising populations, each of us has the responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint within reason. Our subsistence and the very existence of suitable habitat for our children depends on it.

When it comes to figuring out what our carbon footprint is, many of the questions we might ask are somewhat obvious. Do we car pool? Do we use public transportation? Do we work from home so as not to commute at all? Do we conserve electicity with fluorescent lighting and making sure we only light the rooms in use? Do we try to reduce our home's energy footprint through better insulation, windows and technology?

As you tick down the list of questions you might ask to determine your carbon footprint, you might find some of the answers to the questions difficult. Not that they are hard to answer, but changing the behavior to reduce your carbon footprint might be hard to accept. You might find yourself in a struggle between your conscience and your comfort level. I don't know about you, but I don't mind conserving on the things I write about in the previous paragraph. But when I start to think about how my computer use affects global warming, I start to sweat.

Unfortunately, the earth is starting to sweat from the explosion in electrical demand from computers. Some reports indicate that IT data centers will soon fly past the airlines in global greenhouse gas emissions. Considering that there are nearly 50,000 flights per day world wide, it gives you a sense of the tons of C02 power plants emit each day to satisfy the demands of data centers. The biggest offenders are the massive data centers filled with aging, power-hungry servers.

Fortunately, I work for a company that has been improving server energy management for quite a few years. From chip inventions to virtualization innovations to supercomputer breakthroughs, IBM is on the leading edge of reducing data centers' carbon footprints.

As pleased as I am that IBM is developing more energy-efficient data-center technologies, I still have a nagging sense that this IBM employee can do more. How often do I think of the drain on data centers when I use the Web? Of course I'm not advocating less Web use. I think the Web is the answer to a host of other global problems, especially third-world education. And I do try to reduce the number of sites I visit to those which are absolutely necessary for my ongoing education. But when I visit a Web site, especially one that receives a lot of traffic, how do I know that its data center is green? I often wish I could just run a tool in my browser that tests the host data center for electrical efficiency. That is a long ways away, but if any enterprising developer is reading this blog, consider that a noble FireFox plug-in.

We do have a standard certification for green data centers, a part of a whole building's environmental impact. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is the benchmark against which more and more data centers will be built or retrofitted in the future. Perhaps the certification can be put into the metadata of the templates for the sites hosted in LEED-certified data centers. Then enterprising developers can develop a widget or plug-in that displays the LEED certification on those sites.

It would be a great incentive for sites to have this seal if it leads to more traffic from environmentally conscientious computer users around the globe. And it would ease this Web user's conscience to know that I can continue to use the Web as much as I do (almost constantly) and still reduce my carbon footprint.

A solution for world literacy

--Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

As I heard those words uttered aloud in a live performance of Charles Dickens’ timeless classic in my little town, I felt that common pang in my gut whenever I encounter what seems an impossible problem. Hundreds of millions of children around the world want for an adequate education. In many places, we have trouble providing for their basic needs—clean water, food, shelter, clothing, security—let alone literacy. How can we give the children of the world an education if we can’t even build them schools or staff the schools we build?

Nicholas Negroponte has the answer. As the founder of One Laptop Per Child, an organization focused on “providing children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.” These opportunities center upon a low cost, low-power, weatherproof, wireless, easy-to-use laptop, which the organization hopes to one day provide to every child that needs one.

Negroponte is clear that this is an education project, not a laptop project. It’s about enabling children to connect with one another inside and outside of schools, and learn a curriculum that helps them develop the skills they will need to make their way in life. The key skill is Web literacy, which is fast becoming the most important aspect of human literacy. But the project would not be feasible without the laptop. You could not afford to send every child in the world the latest Windows-based rugged, wireless laptop. And even if you could afford to do that, these power-hungry systems would serve as door stops more often than learning tools in places where no reliable power grid exists.

As an educator, I’m as interested in the curriculum as Negroponte is (especially the intercultural aspect). But that is not the focus of this blog. The focus of this blog is to highlight how innovative technology helps to solve the big problems facing humanity on Planet Earth. In this case, I will focus on how a radical new laptop design—coming out of MIT’s Media Lab—can enable educational transformation in places where children haul water and study by candle light. And though the laptop was designed for these severe environments, it suits the needs of children who need not worry about necessities.

The first requirement for this machine—the XO Laptop--is low cost. It is designed to cost around $100, once the economies of scale allow. For now, it costs the organization around $150. Yet it is a fully functioning, practically indestructible machine, complete with Wi-Fi and mesh networking. The primary cost savings is in software. Unlike Windows systems, in which more than half the cost is in software, all the XO software is open source. Based on Linux and a host of applications created by a community of developers, most of the cost of the machine is in hardware.

The second requirement is low power. Not only does the XO consume far less power than an ordinary laptop, it comes with two means of generating power when no plug is near. It has a crank and a pull string device that enable the kids to power their own machines as they go. There are several other innovative aspects of the machine, including a really cool interface. But I won’t dwell on them now for reasons I will make clear later.

If you are still in search of a gift idea for your child, the organization has a special Give One, Get One offer through December 31. I’m confident that my son will not read this blog, so I can say I have participated in the program for his Christmas present. I look forward to working with my son as he learns the new interface and begins connecting with children all over the world through this program. As I learn the inputs and outputs of the XO laptop through his eyes, I’ll issue updates in this blog on the machine and the progress of the program.

World literacy is one of those big problems that I have always thought was impossible to solve. Now for the first time, I can see the glimmer of hope for a solution. It will take time and a lot of social and political change to make it a reality. But One Laptop Per Child is the beginning of a whole new movement. Perhaps I will live to see the generation of children who have learned literacy through this program lead the world into a new reality of peaceful coexistence. That is my Christmas wish for the world.