Laptop cancer

TorgoX on 2004-09-22T00:51:36

Dear Log,

«China and India, thought to be the target of most e-waste exports, have urged Britain and other rich countries through the UN and other international forums to stop exporting hazardous waste because they do not have the facilities to inspect all the traffic being sent.»

--"Poisonous detritus of the electronic revolution": Thousands of tonnes of 'e-waste', some of it highly toxic, is being sent illegally from Britain to Africa and Asia

I got an idea. How about we take a break from Moore's Law for a year or two, and instead of trying to make computers that are faster and/or use less power, how about trying to make them less horribly toxic to make and dispose of?


Laptop cancer

Usher-Banipal on 2004-09-22T03:39:54

It's a little bit too late for that as William Catton, Jr. wrote in "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change" back in 1980: "It is high time to learn (before we become even more numerous and still more 'developed') that the wisest 'use' of coal and oil may be to leave them underground as nature's safe disposal of a primeval atmospheric 'pollutant' - carbon." Page 232.