The Harmony of the Living World

Keep the place and the people inside the account of what a system costs.

Technology belongs to the physical world. Its materials, operating energy, land and labor are part of its story, not an appendix to an otherwise immaterial achievement.

The living world also exceeds its usefulness to computing or to people. It is not sacred merely because a supply chain needs it. The inhabitants and relationships a project changes deserve consideration beyond their price.

That does not yield one permitted amount of computation. Purpose and alternatives matter, as does who receives the gain. The environmental account asks the questions a particular decision can answer rather than borrowing certainty from a global number with unknown boundaries.

Where it is tested

These are not worked examples with correct answers at the back. They are situations in which this Harmony genuinely conflicts with something else that matters. If one of them seems easy, it is probably worth re-reading.

01

An imagined valley is offered jobs and tax revenue from a data center that would also draw from the aquifer used by local farms. People needing employment and people worried about water are often the same neighbors.

The tension Neither need is imaginary. The benefits and costs may arrive at different times and may be difficult to reverse once the facility is built.

What this Harmony asks you to weigh Ask what is known about water, employment and future demand, who can negotiate enforceable limits, and what happens if estimates are wrong. An average footprint from somewhere else cannot settle this place's decision.

Practicing it

• Ask where a workload runs, what powers it and how it is cooled.
• Count manufacture, maintenance and disposal, not only use at the screen.