Green Tech Girl

“Net neutrality” is the idea that the Internet remains free and open and will not discriminate on access based on dollar signs. In simplistic terms, this means that you can access my Green Tech Girl website just as easily as you can Microsoft’s. With the advent of video on demand, many companies are looking for ways to deal with increased bandwith consumption, and some of these plans seem to be crossing the line into a bifurcated Internet.

Google has recently come under fire for a plan perceived to threaten net neutrality, though they claim there is confusion over the matter. (Is caching content the same as limiting bandwidth?) While Obama has been quoted as saying he supports net neutrality, considering his major flip-flip on FISA in favor of the telecom companies, we cannot rely on his administration to protect the people’s interests against the telecoms.

Ultimately, a free and open Internet will always be at risk as long as big corporations own the pipes. I remember reading a long time ago an idea that individual users could create their own worldwide “Internet” via peer-to-peer wifi, thus bypassing the big corporations altogether. Will this ever come to pass? Perhaps. Meanwhile, we still need to remain vigilant on the issue of net neutrality. It will be up to the genius of individual developers to come up with a viable Internet that does not require corporate backing or control.

The green trend has now hit web browsers – you can download the free Flock Browser Eco-Edition here. The browser comes pre-set with links and feeds from various eco-websites, and they give 10% of the search engine proceeds from the browser use to an environmental organization voted on by users.

I downloaded the browser and installed it (it does come in a version for Linux), but I’m not sure if I would use it that much. Some of the eco-trendy sites that come pre-loaded I don’t like particularly much. The one that wins my top “Eco-Irony Award” would be Sprig, which claims to be about the environment while pushing mindless consumerism. (No, you don’t really need to get a new pair of designer expensive “environmentally friendly” shoes when the ones you already have work just fine.) Ecorazzi, which focuses on green celebrities, seconds my list of mindless eco-trendy consumerist crap.

So while I feel that the idea behind Flock’s eco-browser is a good one, I am personally not thrilled about the trend towards corporatey, consumerist websites that play off the green trend but are in reality more of the same consumerism that got us into this environmental mess in the first place.

I’m always interested in new ways of doing business that don’t involve making new stuff. Here’s one interesting application of the Internet: Setting up sites where people can swap goods instead of throwing them away or purchasing new products. This lends itself quite well to things like books and CDs.

One such site that I am currently checking out is Bookins.com, which gives you points for each book you offer for trade and then charges a flat $4.49 shipping fee for books you receive. (You don’t have to pay to ship books, just to receive.)

Of course, you could just use your local library too. But some books are good to keep around as reference. And yes, we all look toward the day when books will be entirely electronic instead of made from paper…and then sadly we’ll have the book publisher equivalent of the RIAA on our asses for book file sharing. For that reason alone, perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I’d like to keep paper books around.