I mean, ignoring how ecologically wasteful it is, just look at the all the issues we're having with other digital content; Books and games being removed from markets and people's libraries, popularity dictated by the controlling companies elevating their preferred content, old games lost to time because companies keep attacking emulators. If you don't have your own copy of something that you can control, whether physical or digital, you don't own it.
is streaming really that much worse on that? there's centralized servers that cost a lot but millions are using the same one, as opposed to millions of players and media that had to be manufactured and shipped. like i don't have any data either way i can just see difficultly in calculating and coming to a discrete answer.
I mean, it doesn't have to be worse to be bad. I've seen multiple studies that put streaming as having less of a carbon footprint than physical media, but then we use it more because it's so plentiful. I see it as the difference between ice cars vs electric. Capitalism isn't gonna let us find the efficient, eco-friendly alternative to cars or anything else because they're keeping us captive in their framework of discourse.
Ah I see yeah, that totally makes sense. Speaking of everything turning into a rental or subscription, reminds me of the fact that you have to pay a fucking subscription for car sear warmers in some luxury cars now, pure insanity. And also I guess there's the fact that any of that stuff stored digitally can just disappear in a snap. Like decades of cultural history, important or not. Kinda wild
I mean, ignoring how ecologically wasteful it is, just look at the all the issues we're having with other digital content; Books and games being removed from markets and people's libraries, popularity dictated by the controlling companies elevating their preferred content, old games lost to time because companies keep attacking emulators. If you don't have your own copy of something that you can control, whether physical or digital, you don't own it.
is streaming really that much worse on that? there's centralized servers that cost a lot but millions are using the same one, as opposed to millions of players and media that had to be manufactured and shipped. like i don't have any data either way i can just see difficultly in calculating and coming to a discrete answer.
I mean, it doesn't have to be worse to be bad. I've seen multiple studies that put streaming as having less of a carbon footprint than physical media, but then we use it more because it's so plentiful. I see it as the difference between ice cars vs electric. Capitalism isn't gonna let us find the efficient, eco-friendly alternative to cars or anything else because they're keeping us captive in their framework of discourse.
at least improvements in efficiency when they are allowed to happen are easier to implement in centralized systems
Not if it costs money to implement those improvements.
US telecom infrastructure:
Ah I see yeah, that totally makes sense. Speaking of everything turning into a rental or subscription, reminds me of the fact that you have to pay a fucking subscription for car sear warmers in some luxury cars now, pure insanity. And also I guess there's the fact that any of that stuff stored digitally can just disappear in a snap. Like decades of cultural history, important or not. Kinda wild