Recently, I was chatting with a friend, and we were talking about ‘de-Googling’, federated networks and self-hosted services. As I was listing the benefits and my largely positive experience with them (the Fediverse for the most part), my friend pointed out that it isn’t an environmentally friendly solution, nor is it optimised for the long term. He told me that it requires more machines that consume more energy than a single large one, as these machines aren’t specialised for hosting services. What’s your view on the argument that ‘several small machines that consume more energy are less optimised and eco-friendly than a single large one built and designed for that purpose’? I realise that the large machine goes hand in hand with techno-fascists and that they are the real problem, but what if we were to look at this from a purely technical, forward-looking perspective on a clean future? How would you respond to this ?
That isnt always the case. A single large machine will consume a lot of resources and will produce a large amount of waste which is often the reason why companies dont want to deal with it responsibly. Theres less thought into the infrastructure and is geared more towards profit which explains my why companies will always irresponsibly pollute with their byproducts. Think landfills, no matter how much money they throw to pass on the problems to another company, they will all cut corners. This has a far larger impact on the ecological system than a smaller machine.
On the other hand, a smaller self hosted machine allows for the person/local group to properly plan out the infrastructure to not only efficiently use resources but to also effectively process/handle byproducts.