apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Great idea--except that it means disposing of all the cords we have that ship automatically with everything.
I have an entire box of these unused cables at home--can we recycle them? It also means buying more stuff to make everything wireless right?
It would be great if computers and other electronics had the option of purchasing a la carte--in other words no cables unless you need them--so less waste.

taracakes, you can probably find a geek in your area (or even circle of friends) who'd be more than willing to take those extra cables off your hands.

I'm not really sure about wireless being greener. You still need miles of cable going to the WISP and you still need boxes in your home for both the wireless transceiver and your wireless router (if we're going all the way). Then you still need cables in between the wireless router and the wireless transceiver. All you're really making un-necessary is the "last mile" in between your house and the nearest trunk. Oh, and the CAT-5 from your router to your computer. More than likely, the CAT-5 connecting the wireless transceiver to your wireless router will be MORE than what would have been required to use existing cable or POTS wiring.

Now, your point about a community wireless network is an interesting one. I want to emphasize "community", not "one big government-ran free ISP" because that scares the bejeezus out of me (both on the Big Brother level, and the "oh my god the government sucks at everything" commercial level). A community network would be (more than likely) ran more efficiently and use existing infrastructure and hardware. There's no need for Clearwire to build a new datacenter in your neighborhood, because Joe the neighborhood geek's probably already got one in his basement. Joe and his compatriot geeks would probably seek the most efficient and helpful mediums available, instead of seeking the most profitable like most big telcos and WISPs. Also, a community oriented system would allow people like taracakes to donate her unused hardware to help make everything more economical.

The best part about a community ISP, to me? It's not being green. It's allowing the community to get involved in something that's typically a closed-doors monopoly affair. It would certainly be an interesting experiment.

If you're using wifi with a laptop instead of a tower, keyboard, mouse, and monitor, you're automatically using much fewer materials.

If using wifi means you don't need a dedicated office space to work at the desktop set-up, so your "home office" is wherever you set the laptop plus wherever you store your printer, rather than a desk/cart with chair, you're automatically using fewer materials.

If not needing a home office means you can live equally comfortably in a smaller space, you're now using a lot fewer resources.

And if being able to comfortably connect to the internet at any time -- not just while sitting at a desk -- saves you trips to the library, running around shopping, etc., then you're really saving resources.

Going wireless is about way more than losing cables: it is a big step in turning your personal computer from the monster on the desk to a personal appliance.

Wireless routers and cards use more power than hardwiring. You may save on materials, but power consumption also goes up.

I agree that the community network seems like a great idea.

phandtomdata: There are tons of problems with that community-based ISP. The first is that to support all those p2ping, bittorrenting and YouTubing users, Joe the Geek needs a fat pipe to the Internet. The Internet, whatever its pretenses, is still a bunch of huge data companies that connect to each other and sell access to people who sell access to you.

One more thing: you ARE being spied on by the government. It's already public knowledge that the NSA had a room sniffing data at one of AT&T's major datacenters. I would bet everything I own that there were similar arrangements at other backbone ISPs. Just about everything you do, from emails to searches, goes over these backbone ISPs and can be sniffed and recorded.