As someone who has been interested in environmental issues since a young age, but who also works in the tech sector, I've questioned for a long time to what extent our digital lives can be considered sustainable at all. We can talk about "green technologies" all we want, but the reality, I'm afraid, is that the cleanest, greenest technology we use these days needs far many more resources overall than whatever we used just a few decades ago. Yes, sure, ebook readers are convenient. But I'm not so sure they are better for the environment or the planet at large. Chances are the opposite is true. As it tends to happen, we mistake convenience for a better choice, I think. And then, yesterday I read in the technology news that Amazon is cutting old Kindles off from the Kindle Store. Basically, old models sold before 2012 and running anything older than version 5.12.2.2 of their software will be unable to download new books from their servers any longer. Users will be able to continue reading whatever books are already available on those devices. But that's it. Now, don't get me wrong. From a business perspective, the decision makes perfect sense. Amazon is a company, not a benefactor. They need to make a profit, and cannot continue supporting old devices forever and ever. I understand that. I don't think they are doing anything unethical here. At one point or another, companies need to drop support for old devices, or the cost of doing business will become unbearable. Again, all that makes perfect business sense. The question is whether it also makes environmental sense, and also whether it is in the long-term interests of society at large. The answer here should be, I think, a resounding no. But that brings up another question that most techies never consider, since they often live in their own techie-land of sorts: could it be that the economic system we live under is no longer compatible with the long-term interests of humanity?. Personally, Amazon's decision regarding Kindles doesn't have an impact on me because I don't own any of their older ebook readers. However, similar decisions by other companies (e.g., Samsung no longer releasing software updates for the my old tablet) do have an impact on me. When that happens, I'm glad there are opensource projects out there that still support some of these old devices. Installing their software is not necessarily easy, but I'm technologically literate enough that I can do it. Still, while that may solve my own personal problem, it certainly doesn't address the larger social issue at hand. As I said, I get the feeling that the underlying economic system is no longer compatible with the long-term survival of our own species. {link to this entry}

While reading a recent issue of This Week in GNOME, I was excited to learn about Speed of Sound, a tool that allows you to type into any Linux application using your voice. So, I downloaded it and installed it from Flathub, and gave it a try. I'm sad to report that, although I find the idea quite exciting, I truly didn't think it was reliable enough to be used during my day to day operations. First of all, I spend a good amount of time at the shell prompt in a terminal window, and Speed of Soud has this tendency to always capitalize the first word of a sentence. Needless to say, that's not going to work at the shell prompt. Also, when I gave it a try for longer texts (as opposed to Linux commands), I realized it misinterpreted many of the words (perhaps because English is not my native language, and I have an obvious Spanish accent) and it also captured my "ummms" and other sounds, which litters the final text. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Perhaps I will revisit it at some point in the future. {link to this entry}