Just as we are currently trying to save our nature, days are not far when we need to save our e-resources. We will have similar crisis for all e-resources soon. So you will ask me how can one help prevent this. I feel every one of us is currently contributing to this problem in some way and each one of us can help reduce this problem. So can we reduce the misuse of e-resources that we are doing? If we want to save our e-resources for our generations to come then we have to think about this seriously. I am talking about the wastage that we are not even realizing while using the e-resources. So what waste am I talking about? Things like Internet bandwidth that we are wasting in forwarding long unnecessary messages or downloading the same image or video repeatedly. Storage that we are wasting in storing images, songs, videos that we are never going to use or view or listen to.
It might look very trivial today, but consider the scenario where we need to book the ambulance through an app only and the network that you will be using to book ambulance to take your dear ones to hospital is congested because someone else is forwarding a long video to his friend just for fun. You may say that this is a very hypothetical situation I am talking about, but believe me friends this not very far from today. Have you thought of booking a cab using phone app? Or getting your money deposited in your account without going to bank or for example not having to fill a deposit slip, or talking to your near and dear ones everyday staying aboard without worrying about the ISD charging? You can even see them while you are talking. Now all this is part of our daily lives and we feel this is the way it should be. Like we are completely depended on petroleum products for our transport needs, soon we will be dependant on Internet for our all communication needs. Things like financial transactions, daily shopping, social communications and so on will be completely dependant on the Internet. So we should realize this now and start conserving the available infrastructure and e-resources.
If you are reading this line that means you have agreed on the problem, so now lets see how we can solve this crisis beginning with baby steps. Currently the main source of e- resources waste is mostly due to social media / messenger apps. Enormous amount of resources are getting wasted using these apps. Same message / image / video gets forwarded multiple times to the same person. This process generates two types of primary wastage, one of course is the use of Internet bandwidth and the other is storage. Can you imagine the total storage that gets wasted for storing same message / image / video on different devices. E.g. if one 100KB image gets forwarded to 1 lac people that means there is a total storage of around 9 GB is used. So we have wasted about 8.9 GB of storage space with just one single image. Secondary waste due to this is the electricity used in transmission, download and storing the same. How we can stop this or at least minimize the waste? Almost all apps now a day give settings to control download of media files (Image / video). You can keep auto download off for all media and then manually choose the media files that you want to download. At same time do not forward any casual message or media especially in groups. Use apps like Facebook, twitter to publish your message or media so that people can have option to view it or not rather then pushing it to them in apps like Whatsapp or Telegram.
This is just one example of how we are wasting our e-resources. There are many more such forms of wasting e-resources. Downloading of movie files multiple times, duplication of files, backup of unnecessary files, etc. For video and audio files pooling system can be used among the group of people to avoid multiple copies of same file. Use cloud based storage offered by many vendors including Google, Microsoft & Amazon to keep your backup safe. You can periodically check your image / movie / songs collection to remove any unwanted or duplicate files. Periodically check your apps installed on smart phone and uninstall any unwanted or trial period app if exist.
I have started my bit by not putting any images in this post…
Gadgetdost Verdict:Waste of e-reources we are ignoring today will become precious for gen-x. So think twice before pressing that forward button next time...
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