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Subject:energy? paper? From:Tom Little <LITTLE_TOM_H -at- OFVAX -dot- LANL -dot- GOV> Date:Mon, 30 Jan 1995 14:35:00 MDT
An anonymous poster writes:
> We are all too energy dependant. We use energy for everything we do.
> Except to read a book. But it looks like some people are trying to change
> that.
> Paper has been around before electricity. So energy isn't necessarily
> needed to make paper. Why do so many people want a paperless world and a
> 100% energy depedant world?
> ( Think about the pyramids. What would it take to build one today. The
> Egyptions built them with no energy. )
Whoa! Don't confuse energy with electricity! Had the Egyptians had modern
technology, they would have used a lot _less_ energy to build the pyramids! We
cannot help but live in a 100% energy dependant world. That's basic physics, and
it's quite inescapable. What we want is to become as energy EFFICIENT as we can.
Which medium requires the most energy to manufacture? If economic cost is any
measure of energy cost (and it often is), then storing a twenty-volume
encyclopedia on a CD-ROM is probably more energy efficient than storing the same
text on reams of paper. A single-page memo sitting alone on a floppy disk is a
different story, though!
Tom Tadfor Little | This
Technical Writer/Editor | space
Los Alamos National Laboratory | for
little_tom_h -at- ofvax -dot- lanl -dot- gov | rent
