Monocropping and cloud – the role cloud can play in driving sustainability

I was truck by a recent debate in a blog by Penelope Gordon, Jean-Francois Barsoum, Norbert Hoeller that seemed to perceive cloud as a cause for poor sustainability controls. http://blog.nutriate.com/cloud/cvcloud/2013/02/monocropping-and-cloud/

Its tempting to think of Cloud computing management systems to have scaling and energy management that is sympathetic to some higher goals of sustainability. Indeed Ive developed drivers and metrics that talk about these overarching system goals. stochastic system management using math probability policy engines do automate and optimize hardware and virtual resource usage in todays ‘green data center’. Indeed new systems exist to do this as seen in The Green Grid http://blog.greenqloud.com/greenpowerusageeffectiveness-gpue/ andhttp://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/new-data-center-metrics-for-the-green-grid/ that focus on Green usage, recycling and policy management. (The Green Grid incidentally have extended the Uptime institute metrics and also have been adopted into the recent ODCA work on SLA and SUOM which seek to influence buyer standards and dynamics)

But these are I would say largely within the Data Center operation and not looking at the wider issue you indicate of ‘is the demand and usage appropriate’

This is a different policy and control issue of demand and supply and resource sustainability. This is the world of autopoietic systems (self-evolving, self-organizing systems) that are driven by the general systems behavior observed in nature and what you refer to as something between chaotic and orders.

I agree there needs to be some kind of Goya principle , the mother earth and the wider sustainability policies. These are bound in earthly issues of economic and social activity and the political and resource ecosystems that are the fabric of these realities.

The recent 12 quotes in Forbes by Joe Mckendrick and the one from our Chris Harding in The Open Group http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2013/03/24/10-quotes-on-cloud-computing-that-really-say-it-all/ highlights the need to put monetary value event on social and sustainable equations such that people and policy makers alike understand the quantification of decisions and not just a qualitative feel and insight.

Its my believe that new big data type facades need to be constructed using cloud perhaps as a vehicle to capture and collect, aggregate and generate insight to the intended or unintended consequences human and increasingly automata activity. The world turns and the clock ticks, population increases ( about 3 new born and 1 dies every second , so in the time I taken to write this blog is increased another 2000 or the size of a village to small town..) and its continues on in a dynamic way.

I'll end with a video I saw of gamification and the principles by Tom Chatfield http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyamsZXXF2w Its not the 7 principles he espouses in this masterclass of new media bounce rate and stickiness that struck me, its the plea at the end in an example he gives of the need for sustainability and populations and governments to understand and visualize consequences of their actions.

In short our very planet and lives and future generations may depend on it.

#CloudComputing