Cost cutting may save the earth

Have you kept an eye on the rate that “real” things are being replaced by the seemingly insignificant, unweighable electrons flowing on the Internet? Real stuff. Like words on paper, task-related travel, answering questions on phones, video tape.

This, of course, is good for your bottom line, as long as you’re not on the supply side of the displaced real resources. Companies slash print budgets while providing better access to libraries of materials, never to be printed in most cases, but read and appreciated by greater numbers. Customer service is improved when made 24/7, as long as good user-experience is applied, which appears to be “customer service” on the web.

This is also good for the environment: when we avoid the creation, disposal or waste of real things. It looks like the Internet may help save the world, unless we drown in mobile batteries and grey computer plastic, of course.