WNYC Radio show New Tech City asks whether we should delete more of our digital history
I was interviewed for the WNYC radio show New Tech City last week, and the story appeared today. It’s a fun piece, and worth listening to.
My one quibble is that the report explicitly creates false balance, because it contrasted my data and analysis-based view of how much electricity information technology (IT) uses with the Greenpeace view that electricity used by IT is large and growing rapidly. As I and Katie Fehrenbacher discussed previously, Greenpeace performed a valuable service by focusing attention on the carbon intensity of the electricity production feeding data centers, but their reports have had numerical inaccuracies in the past, and arguing (as the radio show does) that my views and the Greenpeace statements somehow result in a draw on the environmental front is as clear an example of false balance as I’ve been able to find.
In any case, the radio show raises some interesting questions, so have a listen (Note: I removed the embedded audio in this blog post, because it wasn’t playing properly).
