This article breaks down the entire supply and production chain of the Amazon Echo. It's a good example of just how connected the entire economy is, and how something as simple as the Echo is actually hiding a supply chain that spans the entire globe
Put simply: each small moment of convenience – be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song – requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch
Very interesting. I did a couple of online data science courses, and they just seemed kind of old-fashioned nerdy to me. So, while resting my brain from attempts to “tidy” data related to passengers on the Titanic, I sometimes wondered why people were being paid so much to do this sort of work. The easiest example of a system I could come up with involved apps used for transport. Some bicycle-riding-green-smoothie-drinking-nerd-written AI wiki program causing a whole line of cars burning fossil fuels in the moment to simultaneously decide to exit on to service drive to avoid sofa that fell off the back of a truck on the highway.
IOW, it is the case that income remains proportional to control of energy resources in modern situations/ systems where an individual is not obviously, for instance, the foreman of a construction crew or commander of a platoon.
It has been estimated that one container ship can emit as much pollution as 50 million cars
Isn't that like comparing chalk and cheese. For a start the car isn't an alternative to the cargo ship. Second the pollution characteristics are completely different.
The main problem I have with the Echo is it's a consumption device, it's whole existence is predicated on the expectation that Amazon will sell you more stuff if you have one in your home. Turning on lights is a side issue that just happens to help get it into your house.