LOW←TECH MAGAZINE English

Thematic Book Series: How to Build a Low-tech Internet?

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Book cover. [How to build a low-tech internet?](https://lulu.com/shop/roel-roscam-abbing-and-marie-otsuka-and-kris-de-decker/how-to-build-a-low-tech-internet/paperback/product-9yq8v7.html?q=&page=1&pageSize=4), Kris De Decker, 166 pages, Low-tech Magazine, 2023.

We have launched a new series of books opening up Low-tech Magazine’s archive by theme. The first volume collects all articles on digital technology and is available in our bookstore.

We were told that the internet would dematerialize society and decrease energy use. Contrary to this projection, it has become a massive infrastructure and a rapidly growing energy consumer. In this series of articles, Low-tech Magazine examines the reasons behind the ever-expanding resource use of digital communication and what we can do about it. The internet isn’t an autonomous being. Its growing energy use results from decisions made by software developers, web designers, marketeers, publishers, and internet users. By placing communications in a historical context and with the development of its lightweight, off-the-grid, and solar powered website, Low-tech Magazine challenges our high-tech approach to sustainability and highlights the possibilities of alternative solutions.

Table of contents:

Why we need a speed limit for the internet
Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph
How to build a low-tech internet?
How to build a low-tech website?
How sustainable is a solar powered website?
How and why I stopped buying laptops
Why the office needs a typewriter revolution

Marie Otsuka and Roel Roscam Abbing contributed to this volume, which contains 70 images in black & white. Marie Verdeil made the cover.

How to build a low-tech internet?, Kris De Decker, 162 pages, Low-tech Magazine, 2023. Also available as an ebook.

Patrons get free access to ebooks, as well as early access to new print books at a reduced price.

Other books in the series:

How to downsize a transport network, Kris De Decker, 162 pages, 2023. Ebook edition.

Heating people not spaces, Kris De Decker, 142 pages, 2023. Ebook edition.

The Low-tech Magazine archives are also available as a chronological series consisting of four volumes.

How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Low-tech Magazine is now written and published on a 2006 ThinkPad X60s.

Being an independent journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I always reasoned that I needed a decent computer and that I need to pay for quality. Between 2000 and 2017, I consumed three laptops that I bought new and which cost me around 5,000 euros in total – roughly 300 euros per year over the entire period. The average useful life of my three laptops was 5.7 years.

In 2017, somewhere between getting my office, I decided not to buy any more new laptops. Instead, I switched to a 2006 second-hand machine that I purchased online for 50 euros and which does everything that I want and need. Including a new battery and a simple hardware upgrade, I invested less than 150 euros.

If my 2006 laptop lasts as long as my other machines – if it runs for another 1.7 years – it will have cost me only 26 euros per year. That’s more than 10 times less than the cost of my previous laptops. In this article, I explain my motivations for not buying new laptops, and how you could do the same.

Energy and material use of a laptop

Not buying new laptops saves a lot of money, but also a lot of resources and environmental destruction. According to the most recent life cycle analysis, it takes 3,010 to 4,340 megajoules of primary energy to make a laptop – this includes mining the materials, manufacturing the machine, and bringing it to market. ¹

Each year, we purchase between 160 and 200 million laptops. Using the data above, this means that the production of laptops requires a yearly energy consumption of 480 to 868 petajoules, which corresponds to between one quarter and almost half of all solar PV energy produced worldwide in 2018 (2,023 petajoules). ² The making of a laptop also involves a high material consumption, which includes a wide variety of minerals that may be considered scarce due to different types of constraints: economic, social, geochemical, and geopolitical. ³⁴

The production of microchips is a very energy- and material-intensive process, but that is not the only problem. The high resource use of laptops is also because they have a very short lifespan. Most of the 160-200 million laptops sold each year are replacement purchases. The average laptop is replaced every 3 years (in business) to five years (elsewhere). ³ My 5.7 years per laptop experience is not exceptional.

Laptops don’t change

The study cited dates from 2011, and it refers to a machine made in 2001: a Dell Inspiron 2500. You are forgiven for thinking that this “most recent life cycle analysis of a laptop” is outdated, but it’s not. A 2015 research paper discovered that the embodied energy of laptops is static over time. ⁵

The scientists disassembled 11 laptops of similar size, made between 1999 and 2008, and weighed the different components. Also, they measured the silicon die area for all motherboards and 30 DRAM cards produced over roughly the same period (until 2011). They found that the mass and material composition of all key components – battery, motherboard, hard drive, memory – did not change significantly, even though manufacturing processes became more efficient in energy and material use.

The reason is simple: improvements in functionality balance the efficiency gains obtained in the manufacturing process. Battery mass, memory, and hard disk drive mass decreased per unit of functionality but showed roughly constant totals per year. The same dynamic explains why newer laptops don’t show lower operational electricity consumption compared to older laptops. New laptops may be more energy-efficient per computational power, but these gains are offset by more computational power. Jevon’s paradox is nowhere as evident as it is in computing.

The challenge

All this means that there’s no environmental or financial benefit whatsoever to replacing an old laptop with a new one. On the contrary, the only thing a consumer can do to improve their laptop’s ecological and economic sustainability is to use it for as long as possible. This is facilitated by the fact that laptops are now a mature technology and have more than sufficient computational power. One problem, though. Consumers who try to keep working on their old laptops are likely to end up frustrated. I shortly explain my frustrations below, and I’m pretty confident that they are not exceptional.

Image: The three new laptops I used from 2000 to 2017.

My first laptop: Apple iBook (2000-2005)

In 2000, when I was working as a freelance science and tech journalist in Belgium, I bought my first laptop, an Apple iBook. Little more than two or three years later, the charger started malfunctioning. When informed of the price for a new charger, I was so disgusted with Apple’s sales practices – chargers are very cheap to produce, but Apple sold them for a lot of money – that I refused to buy it. Instead, I managed to keep the charger working for a few more years, first by putting it under the weight of books and furniture, and when that didn’t work anymore, by putting it in a firmly tightened clamp.

My second laptop: IBM ThinkPad R52 (2005-2013)

When the charger eventually died entirely in 2005, I decided to look for a new laptop. I had only one demand: it should have a charger that lasts or is at least cheap to replace. I found more than I was looking for. I bought an IBM Thinkpad R52, and it was love at first use. My IBM laptop was the Apple iBook counterpart, not just in terms of design (a rectangular box available in all colours as long as it’s black). More importantly, the entire machine was built to last, built to be reliable, and built to be repairable.

Circular and modular products are all the hype these days, its lifetime could be extended endlessly by gradually repairing and replacing every part that it consists of. The question is not how we can evolve towards a circular economy, but instead why we continue to evolve away from it.

The question is not how we can evolve towards a circular economy, but instead why we continue to evolve away from it.

My Thinkpad was more expensive to buy than my iBook, but at least I didn’t spend all that money on a cute design but a decent computer. The charger gave no problems, and when I lost it during a trip and had to buy a new one, I could do so for a fair price. Little did I know that my happy purchase was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Image: The IBM ThinkPad R52 from 2005.

My third laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad T430 (2013-2017)

Fast forward to 2013. I am now living in Spain and I’m running Low-tech Magazine. I’m still working on my IBM Thinkpad R52, but there are some problems on the horizon. First of all, Microsoft will soon force me to upgrade my operating system, because support for Windows XP is to end in 2014. I don’t feel like spending a couple of hundred euros on a new operating system that would be too demanding for my old laptop anyway. Furthermore, the laptop had gotten a bit slow, even after it had been restored to its factory settings. In short, I fell into the trap that the hardware and software industries have set up for us and made the mistake of thinking that I needed a new laptop.

Having been so fond of my Thinkpad, it was only logical to get a new one. Here’s the problem: in 2005, shortly after I had bought my first Thinkpad, Lenovo, a Chinese manufacturer that is now the largest computer maker in the world, bought IBM’s PC business. Chinese companies don’t have a reputation for building quality products, especially not at the time. However, since Lenovo was still selling Thinkpads that looked almost identical to those built by IBM, I decided to try my luck and bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T430 in April 2013. At a steep price, but I assumed that quality had to be paid for.

My mistake was clear from the beginning. I had to send the new laptop back twice because its case was deformed. When I finally got one that didn’t wobble on my desk, I quickly ran into another problem: the keys started breaking off. I can still remember my disbelief when it happened for the first time. The IBM Thinkpad is known for its robust keyboard. If you want to break it, you need a hammer. Lenovo obviously didn’t find that so important and had quietly replaced the keyboard with an inferior one. Mind you, I can be an aggressive typist, but I have never broken any other keyboard.

I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros. In the months after that, replacement keys became a recurring cost. After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros. I stopped using the keyboard altogether, temporarily finding a solution in an external keyboard. However, this was impractical, especially for working away from home – and why else would I want a laptop?

There was no getting around it anymore: I needed a new laptop. Again. But which one? For sure it would not be one made by Lenovo or Apple.

Image: Replacing all keys on my Lenovo T430 would have cost me 1,350 euros.

My fourth laptop: IBM Thinkpad X60s (2017-now)

Not finding what I was looking for, I decided to go back in time. By now, it had dawned on me that new laptops are of inferior quality compared to older laptops, even if they carry a much higher price tag. I found out that Lenovo switched keyboards around 2011 and started searching auction sites for Thinkpads built before that year. I could have changed back to my ThinkPad R52 from 2005, but by now, I had become accustomed to a Spanish keyboard, and the R52 had a Belgian one.

In April 2017, I settled on a used Thinkpad X60s from 2006. ⁶ As of December 2020, the machine is in operation for almost 4 years and is 14 years old – three to five times older than the average laptop. If I loved my Thinkpad R52 from 2005, I adore my Thinkpad X60s from 2006. It’s just as sturdily built – it already survived a drop from a table on a concrete floor – but it’s much smaller and also lighter: 1.43 kg vs. 3.2 kg.

My 2006 Thinkpad X60s does everything I want it to do. I use it to write articles, do research, and maintain the websites. I have also used it on-stage to give lectures, projecting images on a large screen. There’s only one thing missing on my laptop, especially nowadays, and that’s a webcam. I solve this by firing up the cursed 2013 laptop with the broken keys whenever I need to, happy to give it some use that doesn’t involve its keyboard. It could also be solved by a switch to the Thinkpad X200 from 2008, which is a newer version of the same model and has a webcam.

Image: My ThinkPad X60s.

How to make an old laptop run like it’s new

Not buying any more new laptops is not as simple as buying a used laptop. It’s advisable to upgrade the hardware, and it’s essential to downgrade the software. There are two things you need to do:

1. Use low energy software

My laptop runs on Linux Lite, one of several open-source operating systems specially designed to work on old computers. The use of a Linux operating system is not a mere suggestion. There’s no way you’re going to revive an old laptop if you stick to Microsoft Windows or Apple OS because the machine would freeze instantly. Linux Lite does not have the flashy visuals of the newest Apple and Windows interfaces, but it has a familiar graphical interface and looks anything but obsolete. It takes very little space on the hard disk and demands even less computing power. The result is that an old laptop, despite its limited specifications, runs smoothly. I also use light browsers: Vivaldi and Midori.

Having used Microsoft Windows for a long time, I find Linux operating systems to be remarkably better, even more so because they are free to download and install. Furthermore, Linux operating systems do not steal your personal data and do not try to lock you in, like the newest operating systems from both Microsoft and Apple do. That said, even with Linux, obsolescence cannot be ruled out. For example, Linux Lite will stop its support for 32-bit computers in 2021, which means that I will soon have to look for an alternative operating system, or buy a slightly younger 64-bit laptop.

2. Replace the hard disk drive with a solid-state drive

In recent years, solid-state drives (SSD) have become available and affordable, and they are much faster than hard disk drives (HDD). Although you can revive an old laptop by merely switching to a light-weight operating system, if you also replace the hard disk drive with a solid-state drive, you’ll have a machine that is just as fast as a brand new laptop. Depending on the storage capacity you want, an SSD will cost you between 20 euro (120 GB) and 100 euro (960 GB).

Installment is pretty straightforward and well documented online. Solid-state drives run silently and are more resistant to physical shock, but they have a shorter life expectancy than hard disk drives. Mine is now working for almost 4 years. It seems that both from an environmental and financial viewpoint, an old laptop with SSD is a much better choice than buying a new laptop, even if the solid-state drive needs replacement now and then.

Spare laptops

Meanwhile, my strategy has evolved. I have bought two identical models for a similar price, in 2018 and early 2020, to use as spare laptops. Now I plan to keep working on these machines for as long as possible, having more than sufficient spare parts available. Since I bought the laptop, it had two technical issues. After roughly a year of use, the fan died. I had it repaired overnight in a tiny and messy IT shop run by a Chinese man in Antwerp, Belgium. He said that my patched fan would run for another six months, but it’s still working more than two years later.

Then, last year, my X60s suddenly refused to charge its battery, an issue that had also appeared with my cursed 2013 laptop. It seems to be a common problem with Thinkpads, but I could not solve it yet. Neither did I really have to because I had a spare laptop ready and started using that one whenever I needed or wanted to work outside.

Image: Three identical 2006 laptops, all in working order, for less than 200 euros.

Image: Inside the Thinkpad X60s. Source: [Hardware Maintenance Manual](https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/42x3550_04.pdf).

The magical SD-card

Now to introduce you to my magical SD-card, which is another hardware upgrade that facilitates the use of old (but also new) laptops. Many people have their personal documents stored on their laptop’s hard drive and then make backups to external storage media if all goes well. I do it the other way around.

I have all my data on a 128 GB SD-card, which I can plug into any of the Thinkpads that I own. I then make monthly backups of the SD-card, which I store on an external storage medium, as well as regular backups of the documents that I am working on, which I temporarily store on the drive of the laptop that I am working on. This has proven to be very reliable, at least for me: I have stopped losing work due to computer problems and insufficient backups.

The other advantage is that I can work on any laptop that I want and that I’m not dependent on a particular machine to access my work. You can get similar advantages when you keep all your data in the cloud, but the SD-card is the more sustainable option, and it works without internet access.

Hypothetically, I could have up to two hard drive failures in one day and keep working as if nothing happened. Since I am now using both laptops alternately – one with battery, the other one without – I can also leave them at different locations and cycle between these places while carrying only the SD-card in my wallet. Try that with your brand new, expensive laptop. I can also use my laptops together if I need an extra screen.

In combination with a hard disk drive, the SD-card also increases the performance of an old laptop and can be an alternative to installing a solid-state drive. My spare laptop does not have one and it can be slow when browsing heavy-weight websites. However, thanks to the SD-card, opening a map or document happens almost instantly, as does scrolling through a document or saving it. The SD-card also keeps the hard disk running smoothly because it’s mostly empty. I don’t know how practical using an SD-card is for other laptops, but all my Thinkpads have a slot for them.

The costs

Let’s make a complete cost calculation, including the investment in spare laptops and SD-card, and using today’s prices for both solid-state drives and SD-cards, which have become much cheaper since I have bought them:

ThinkPad X60s: 50 euro
ThinkPad X60s spare laptop: 60 euro
ThinkPad X60 spare laptop: 75 euro
Two replacement batteries: 50 euro
240 GB solid-state drive: 30 euro
128 GB SD-card: 20 euro
Total: 285 euros

Even if you buy all of this, you only spent 285 euros. For that price, you may be able to buy the crappiest new laptop on the market, but it surely won’t get you two spare laptops. If you manage to keep working with this lot for ten years, your laptop costs would be 28.5 euros per year. You may have to replace a few solid-state drives and SD-cards, but it won’t make much difference. Furthermore, you save the ecological damage that is caused by the production of a new laptop every 5.7 years.

Image: My laptop needs are met for the foreseeable future.

Don’t take it too far

Although I have used my Thinkpad X60s as an example, the same strategy works with other Thinkpad models – here’s an overview of all historical models – and laptops from other brands (which I know nothing about). If you prefer not to buy on auction sites, you can walk to the nearest pawnshop and get a used laptop with a guarantee. The chances are that you don’t even need to buy anything, as many people have old laptops lying around.

There’s no need to go back to a 2006 machine. I hope it’s clear that I am trying to make a statement here, and I probably went as far back as one can while keeping things practical. My first try was a used ThinkPad X30 from 2002, but that was one step too far. It uses a different charger type, it has no SD-card slot, and I could not get the wireless internet connection working. For many people, it may serve to choose a somewhat younger laptop. That will give you a webcam and a 64-bit architecture, which makes things easier. Of course, you can also try to beat me and go back to the 1990s, but then you’ll have to do without USB and wireless internet connection.

Your choice of laptop also depends on what you want to do with it. If you use it mainly for writing, surfing the web, communication, and entertainment, you can do it as cheaply as I did. If you do graphical or audiovisual work, it’s more complicated, because in that case, you’re probably an Apple user. The same strategy could be applied, on a somewhat younger and more expensive laptop, but it would suggest switching from a Mac to a Linux operating system. When it comes to office applications, Linux is clearly better than its commercial alternatives. For a lack of experience, I cannot tell you if that holds for other software as well.

This is a hack, not a new economical model

Although capitalism could provide us with used laptops for decades to come, the strategy outlined above should be considered a hack, not an economical model. It’s a way to deal with or escape from an economic system that tries to force you and me to consume as much as possible. It’s an attempt to break that system, but it’s not a solution in itself. We need another economical model, in which we build all laptops like pre-2011 Thinkpads. As a consequence, laptop sales would go down, but that’s precisely what we need. Furthermore, with today’s computing efficiency, we could significantly reduce the operational and embodied energy use of a laptop if we reversed the trend towards ever higher functionality.

Significantly, hardware and software changes drive the fast obsolescence of computers, but the latter has now become the most crucial factor. A computer of 15 years old has all the hardware you need, but it’s not compatible with the newest (commercial) software. This is true for operating systems and every type of software, from games to office applications to websites. Consequently, to make laptop use more sustainable, the software industry would need to start making every new version of its products lighter instead of heavier. The lighter the software, the longer our laptops will last, and we will need less energy to use and produce them.

Images: Jordi Manrique Corominas, Adriana Parra, Roel Roscam Abbing

Deng, Liqiu, Callie W. Babbitt, and Eric D. Williams. “Economic-balance hybrid LCA extended with uncertainty analysis: case study of a laptop computer.” Journal of Cleaner Production 19.11 (2011): 1198-1206. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652611000801 ↩︎
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). https://www.irena.org/solar ↩︎
André, Hampus, Maria Ljunggren Söderman, and Anders Nordelöf. “Resource and environmental impacts of using second-hand laptop computers: A case study of commercial reuse.” Waste Management 88 (2019): 268-279. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X19301825 ↩︎ ↩︎
Bihouix, Philippe. The Age of Low Tech: Towards a Technologically Sustainable Civilization. Policy Press, 2020. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-age-of-low-tech ↩︎
Kasulaitis, Barbara V., et al. “Evolving materials, attributes, and functionality in consumer electronics: Case study of laptop computers.” Resources, conservation and recycling 100 (2015): 1-10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344915000683 ↩︎
Lenovo took over IBM’s PC business in 2005 and so strictly speaking I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X60s. However, the hardware had not changed yet, and the laptop only carries the new brand name along that of IBM. My spare laptop, an almost identical model from the same year (X60 instead of X60s), has no reference to Lenovo whatsoever. ↩︎

Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Olivetti Sottsass mechanical typewriter, 1969. Source: [eBay](http://www.ebay.es/itm/Machine-a-ecrire-design-OLYMPIA-style-valentine-Olivetti-Sottsass-Typewriter-/172160392996?hash=item28158f1f24:g:02oAAOSwZ8ZXBtNh).

Digital equipment is one of the main drivers behind the quickly growing energy use of modern office work. Could we rethink and redesign office equipment, combining the best of mechanical and digital devices?

The Artisanal Office (Antiquity - 1870s)

Office work has accompanied humankind since the formation of social, economic and political organisation and state administration structures, and the functioning of economic trade. The first office institutions were founded in Antiquity, for example in Egypt, Rome, Byzantium, and China. The period from these early civilisations up to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was marked by the stability of institutional forms and means of office work. ¹²

The bulk of office work involved writing — copying out letters and documents, adding up columns of figures, computing and sending out bills, keeping accurate records of financial transactions. ³ The only tools were pen and paper — or rather the quill (the steel pen was invented only in the 1850s) and, before the 1100s in the Western world, stone or clay tablets, papyrus, or parchment.

Consequently, all writing — and copying — was done by hand. To copy a document, one simply wrote it again. Sometimes, letters were copied twice: one for the record, and the other to guard against the possibility that the first might get lost. The invention of the printing press in the late middle ages freed scribes from copying books, but the printing press was not suited for copying a few office documents. ⁴

Source: [Early Office Museum](http://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1900s_ii.htm)

Communication was largely human-powered, too, using the feet rather than the hands: people ran around to bring oral or written information from one person to another, either inside buildings or across countries and continents. Finally, all calculating was done in the head, only aided by mathematical charts and tables (which were composed by mental reckoning), or by simple tools like the abacus (not a calculation machine but a memory aid, similar to writing down a calculation).

The Mechanised Office (1870s - 1950s)

Before the Industrial Revolution, business operated mostly in local or regional markets, and their internal operations were controlled and coordinated through informal communication, principally by word of mouth except when letters were needed to span distances. From the 1840s onwards, the expansion of the railway and telegraph networks in North America encouraged business to grow and serve larger markets, at a time when improvements in manufacturing technology created potential economies of scale. ⁵

The informal and primarily oral mode of communication broke down and gave way to a complex and extensive formal communication system depending heavily on written documents of various sorts, not just in business but also in government. ⁵ Between the 1870s and the 1920s, writing, copying, and other office activities were mechanised to handle this flow of information.

The birth of office equipment and systematic management was accompanied by three other trends. The first was the spectacular growth in the number of office workers, mainly women, who would come to operate these machines. The second was the rise of proper office buildings, which would house the quickly growing number of workers and machines. The third was a division of labour, mirroring the evolution in factories. Instead of performing a diverse set of activities, clerks became responsible for clearly defined sub-activities, such as typing, filing, or mail handling.

This article focuses exclusively on the machinery of office work, and more specifically its evolution in relation to energy use. While it’s impossible to write a complete history of the office without taking into account the social and economic context, this narrow focus on machines reveals important issues that have not been dealt with in historical accounts of office work.

Typewriters

Of central importance in the nineteenth-century information revolution was the typewriter, which appeared in 1874 and became widespread by 1900. (All dates are for the US, where modern office work originated). The “writing machine” made full-time handwriting obsolete. Typing is roughly five times quicker than handwriting and produces uniform text. However, the typewriter’s influence went far beyond the writing process itself.

Underwood portable typewriter, 1930s. Source: [Typewriter Heaven](http://typewriterheaven.blogspot.com.es/p/underwood.html)

For copying, an even larger gain in speed was obtained in the combination of the typewriter with carbon paper, an earlier invention from the 19th century. This thin paper, coated with a layer of pigment, was placed in between normal paper sheets. Unlike a quill or pen, the typewriter provided enough pressure to produce up to 10 copies of a document without the need to type the text more than once. The typewriter was also made compatible with the stencil duplicator, which appeared around the same time and could make a larger number of copies. Considering the importance of writing and copying, the “writing machine” was a true revolution. ⁴⁶

The typewriter didn’t reduce the amount of time that clerks spent writing and copying. Rather, the time spent writing and copying remained the same, while the production of paper documents increased. By the early years of the twentieth century, it became clear that old methods of storing documents — stacked up in drawers or impaled on spikes — could not cope with the increasing mounds of papers. This led to the invention of the vertical filing cabinet, which would radically expand the information that could be stored in a given space. ⁴⁷

Mechanical Calculators

The typewriter quickly evolved into a diverse set of general and special purpose machines, just like the computer would one hundred years later. There appeared shorthand or stenographic typewriters (which further increased writing speed), book typewriters (which typed on bound books that lay flat when opened), automatic typewriters (which were designed to type form letters controlled by a perforated strip of paper), ultraportable and pocket typewriters (for writing short letters and notes while on the road), bookkeeping typewriters (which could count and write), and teletypewriters (which could activate another typewriter at a distance through the telegraph network). ⁴⁶ The latter two will be dealt with in more detail below.

Mechanical calculating machines were another important tool in the new, mechanised office. “To clerks, mathematical machines are what the rock drill is to the subway labourer”, stated an office management manual from 1919. ⁸ Mechanical calculating machines could add, subtract, multiply and divide through the motion of their parts. Many of these machines had a typewriter-style keyboard with a column for each digit entered (a “full keyboard”). This allowed numbers to be entered more quickly than on a more compact ten-key device, which became common only from the 1950s. ⁹

[Monroe Model K-20 Calculating Machine](http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_690557), 1921. The Smithsonian.

Devices designed especially for addition (and sometimes subtraction) were known as adding machines. Adding up long lists of numbers was typical for many business applications, and in mathematical terms many offices didn’t need to function at any more sophisticated level. The first practical adding machine for routine office work — the Comptometer — was introduced in 1886. ⁴⁹ At the beginning of the 1900s, the typewriter and the adding machine were combined into the adding typewriter or bookkeeping machine, which became central to the processing of all financial data. ¹⁰

Teletypewriters

Obviously, the telegraph (1840s) and the telephone (1870s) also had an enormous impact on office work. The typewriter, beyond its use in business and government offices, also became an essential machine in telegraph offices. Initially, the telegrapher listened to the Morse sounder and wrote the received messages directly in plain language with a typewriter. ¹¹ In the early 1900s, a special typewriter — the “teletypewriter” or “teletype” — was designed to transmit and receive telegraphic messages without the need for an operator trained in the Morse code. ¹²

When a telegraphist typed a message, the teletypewriter sent electrical impulses to another teletypewriter at the other end of the line, which typed the same message automatically. From the 1920s onwards, teletypewriters became common in the offices of companies, governmental organisations, banks, and press associations. They were used for exchanging data over private networks between different departments of an organisation, a job previously done by messenger boys. ¹¹

A newly made telegraph key for radio amateurs. Source: [Milestone Technologies](https://mtechnologies.com/ghd/).

Starting in the 1930s, central switching exchanges were established through which a subscriber could communicate by teletypewriter with any other subscriber to the service, similar to the telephone network but for the purpose of sending text-based messages. This became the worldwide telex-network, now largely demolished. Telex allowed the instantaneous and synchronous transmission of written messages, like today’s chat or email over the internet, or like the exchange of text messages over the mobile phone network (teletypewriters could use the wireless telegraph infrastructure). Telex was also used for broadcasting news and other information, which was received on print-only teletypewriters. ¹¹

The Energy Footprint of the Mechanised Office

The office equipment that appeared in the late nineteenth century was in use until the 1970s, when it was replaced by computers. It is now considered obsolete, but upon a closer look, the superiority of today’s computerised machines isn’t as obvious as you would think. This is especially true when you take into account the energy that is required to make both alternatives work. Although it offered spectacular improvements over earlier methods, and although it could perform similar functions as today’s digital information technology, much of the office equipment described above remained manually powered for decades. ¹³

The first succesful electro-mechanical typewriter — the IBM Electromatic — was introduced in 1935, and the breakthrough came only in 1961, with the highly succesful IBM Selectric typewriters. Unlike a traditional typewriter, this machine used an interchangeable typing element, nicknamed the “golf ball”, which spins to the right character and moves across the page as you type. ¹³¹⁴

A large Bell System international switchboard in 1943.

Although electric motors were used on some of the mechanical calculators already in 1901, electrically driven calculators became common only between the 1930s and the 1950s, depending on the type. Pinwheel calculators remained manually operated until their demise in the 1970s. ¹³

Unlike typewriters and calculating machines, the telephone and the telegraph could not function without electricity, which forms the basis of their operation. However, compared to today’s communications networks, power use was small: until the late 1950s, almost all routing and switching in the telephone and telegraph infrastructure was done by human operators plugging wires into boards. ¹¹¹⁵

The Digital Office (1950s - today)

With the arrival of the computer, eventually all office activities became electrically powered. The business computer appeared in the 1950s, although it was not until the mid-1980s that this ‘machine’ became a common office tool. Reading, writing, copying, data processing, communication, and information storage became totally dependent on electricity.

Screens, Printers and Scanners

The computer took over the tasks of other machines in the office such as calculating machines, bookkeeping machines, teletypewriters, and vertical filing cabinets. In fact, on the surface, one could say that the computer is the office. After all, its dominant metaphor is taken from office work: it’s got a “desktop”, “files”, “folders”, “documents”, and a “paper bin”. ¹⁶ Furthermore, it can send and receive “mail”, make phone calls and accomodate (virtual) face-to-face meetings.

On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the arrival of the computer also led to the appearance of new office equipment, which is just as essential to office work as the computer itself. The most important of these devices are printers, scanners, monitors, and new types of computers (data servers, smartphones, tablets). All these machines require electricity.

Monitors and data servers appeared because the computer introduced an alternative information medium to paper, the electronic format. Printers and scanners appeared because this new medium, contrary to expectations, did not replace the paper format. Although documents can be read, written, transmitted, stored and retrieved in a digital format, in practice both formats are used alongside each other, depending on the task at hand.

In spite of the computer, and later the internet, paper has stubbornly remained a key feature of office life. A 2012 study concluded that “most of the offices we visited were more or less full of paper”. ¹⁷ This means that the use of resources further increases: to the electricity use of the digital devices, we also have to add the resources involved in making paper.

Computer scientist Bob Braden at his office in 1996. Picture: Carl Malamud.

In their 2002 book The Myth of the Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper investigate why and how office workers — especially the growing group of knowledge workers — are still using paper while new, digital technologies have become so widely available. ⁷

They argue that office workers’ reluctance to change is not simply a matter of irrational resistance: “These individuals use paper at certain stages in their work because the technology they are provided with as an alternative does not offer all they need.” Obviously, digital documents have important advantages over paper documents. However, paper documents also have unique advantages, which are all too often ignored.

For example, it was found that office workers actively build up different kinds of paper arrangements on or near their office desks, reminding them of different matters and preparing them for specific tasks. Computers do not reproduce this kind of physical accumulation. Information exchange, for example in meetings, is another common office practice in which paper is used. Actions performed in relation to paper are, to a large extent, made visible to one’s colleagues, facilitating social interaction. When using a laptop, it’s impossible to know what other people in a meeting are looking at. ⁷¹⁷

Welcome to the Paperless Office

Most important, however, is the point that paper tends to be the preferred medium for reading documents. Paper helps reading because it allows quick and flexible navigation through and around documents, reading across more than one document, marking up a document while reading, and interweaving reading and writing — all important activities of modern knowledge work. ⁷

Although some electronic document systems support annotation, this is never as flexible as pen and paper. Likewise, moving through online documents can be slow and frustrating — it requires breaking away from ongoing activity, because it relies heavily on visual, spatially constrained cues and one-handed input. Opening multiple windows on a computer screen doesn’t work for back-and-forth cross-referencing of other material during authoring work, both because of slow visual navigation and because of the limited space on the computer screen. ⁷

The Paperless Office. www.Multi-Monitors.com.

The use of multiple computer screens (and the use of multiple computers at the same time) is an attempt to overcome the inherent limits of the digital medium and make it more “paper-like”. With multiple screens, it becomes possible to interweave reading and writing, or to read across more than one document. Research has shown that work productivity increases when office workers have access to multiple screens — a result that mirrors Sellen and Harpers findings about the importance of paper. ¹⁸¹⁹²⁰²¹

The use of multiple monitors is rapidly increasing in the workplace, and the increase in “screen real estate” is not limited to two screens per office worker. ¹⁹²¹ Fully integrated display sets of twelve individual screens are now selling for around $3,000. ²² A recent innovation are USB-powered, portable monitors, aimed at travelling knowledge workers but just as handy at the office. Because these monitors have their own set of dedicated hardware, rather than putting all the work of another screen on the computer itself, it’s possible to connect up to five portable screens to a laptop. ²³ A multi-touchscreen keyboard, already on the market, could solve the annotation issue.

The Energy Footprint of the Digital Office

The problem with extra screens is that they increase energy use considerably. Adding a second monitor to a laptop roughly doubles its electricity use, adding five portable screens triples it. A 12-screen display with a suited computer to run it consumes more than 1,000 watt of power. If paper use can be reduced by introducing more and more computer screens, then the lower resource consumption associated with paper will be compensated for with a higher resource consumption for digital devices.

A similar switcheroo happened with information storage and communication. Digital storage saves paper, storage space and transportation, but in order to make digital information readily accessible, dataservers (the filing cabinets of the digital age) have to be fed with energy for 24 hours per day. And just as the typewriter and carbon paper increased the production of documents, so did the computer. Especially since the arrival of the internet, people can access more information more easily than ever before, resulting in an increase of both digital and paper documents. Ever cheaper, faster and better quality printers and copiers — all digital devices — keep encouraging the reproduction of paper documents. ⁷

More screens. [Live Wall Media](www.livewallmedia.com/products/video-walls/)

The computer increases energy use in many different ways. First of all, digital technology entails extra energy use for cooling — the main energy use in office buildings. A 2011 study, which calculated the energy use of two future scenarios, concluded that if the use of digital technology in the office keeps increasing, it would become impossible to design an office building that can be cooled without air-conditioning. ²⁴ In the “techno-explosion” scenario, all office workers would have two 24’’ computer screens, a 27’’ touchscreen keyboard, and a tablet. The perhaps extreme scenario also includes one media wall per 20 employees in the office break zone.

On top of operational energy use and cooling comes a higher energy use during the manufacturing phase. The energy used for making a typewriter was spread out over many decades of use. The energy required for the production of a computer, on the other hand, is a regularly reoccuring cost because computers are replaced every three years or so. The internet, which has largely engulfed the telephone and telegraph infrastructure, has become another major source of power demand. The network infrastructure, which takes care of the routing and switching of digital information, uses roughly as much energy as all end-use computers connected to the internet combined.

The Lower Energy Office of the Future

The typewriter was just as revolutionary in the 1900s as is the computer today. Both machines transformed the office environment. However, when we consider energy use, the obvious difference is that the second information revolution was accomplished at much higher costs in terms of energy. So, maybe we should have a good look at pre-digital office equipment and find out what we can learn from it.

During the last ten years or so, the typewriter has seen a remarkable revival with artists and writers, a trend that was recently documented in The Typewriter Revolution: A typist Companion for the 21st Century (2015). ¹⁴ Like paper, the typewriter has many unique benefits. Obviously, a manual typewriter requires no electricity to operate. If it’s built before the 1960s, it’s built to outlast a human life. A typewriter doesn’t become obsolete because its operating system is no longer supported, and it can be repaired relatively easily using common tools. If we compare energy input with a simple measure of performance, the typewriter gets a better score than the computer.

There are also practical advantages. A typewriter is always immediately ready for use. It needs no virus protection or software updates. It can’t be hacked or spied upon. Finally, and this is what explains its success with writers and poets: it’s a distraction-free, single-purpose machine that forces its user to focus on writing. There are no emails, no news alerts, no chat messages, no search engines and no internet shops.

The Typewriter Manifesto. Source: The Typewriter Revolution [^14].

For office workers, and for knowledge workers in particular, a typewriter could be just as useful as for a poet. Computers may have increased work productivity, but nowadays they are “connected to the biggest engine of distraction ever invented”, the internet. ¹⁴ Studies indicate that web web activities are among the main distractions that keep office workers away from productive work. ²⁵ ²⁶ Many online applications are especially designed to be addictive. ²⁷

A typewriter also forces people to write differently, combating distraction within the writing process itself. There is no delete key, no copy-and-paste function. With the computer, editing “became a part of writing from the very start, making the writer ever anxious about anything that just took place”. ²⁸ The typewriter, on the other hand, forces the writer to think out sentences carefully before committing them to paper, and to keep going forward instead of rewriting what was already written. ¹⁴

The “Back-in-Time” Sustainable Office

How can we insert the common sense of the typewriter — and other pre-digital equipment — into the modern office? Basically, there are three strategies. The most radical is to replace all our digital devices by mechanical ones, and replace all dataservers with paper stacked in vertical filing cabinets, in other words we could go back in time.

This would surely lower energy use, and it’s the most resilient option: for all their wonders, computers serve absolutely no purpose when there’s no electricity. Nevertheless, this is not an optimal strategy, because we would lose all the good things that the computer has to offer. “The enemy isn’t computers themselves: it’s an all-embracing, exclusive computing mentality”, writes Richard Polt in The Typewriter Revolution. ¹⁴

Royal Quiet DeLuxe, 1953. [Machines of Loving Grace](http://machinesoflovinggrace.com/royals.htm)

Another strategy is to use mechanical office equipment alongside digital office equipment. There’s some potential for energy reduction in the combined use of both technologies. For interweaving reading and writing, the typewriter could be used for writing and the computer screen for reading, which saves an extra screen and a printer. A typewriter could also be combined with a low energy tablet instead of a laptop or desktop computer, because in this configuration the computer’s keyboard is less important.

Once finished, or once ready for final editing in a digital format, a typewritten text can be transferred to a computer by scanning the typewritten pages. The actual typewritten text can be displayed as an image (“typecasting”), or it can be scanned with optical recognition software (ORC), which converts typewritten text into a digital format. This process implies the use a scanner or a digital camera, however these devices use much less energy than a printer, a second screen, or a laptop. By reintroducing the typewriter into the digital office, the use of the computer could thus be reduced in time, while the ’need’ for a second screen disappears.

The Low-tech Sustainable Office

The third strategy is to rethink and redesign office equipment, combining the best of mechanical and digital devices. This would be the most intelligent strategy, because it offers a high degree of sustainability and resilience while keeping as much of the digital accomplishments as possible. Such a low-tech office requires a redesign of office equipment, and could be combined with a low-tech internet and electricity infrastructure

E-Typewriters

For low-tech writing, a couple of devices are available. A first example is the Freewrite, a machine that came on the market earlier this year after a succesful crowdfunding campaign. ²⁹ Like a typewriter, it’s a distraction-free machine that can only be used to write on, and that’s always instantly ready to be used. Unlike a typewriter, however, it has a 5.5’’ e-paper screen, it can store a million pages, and it offers a WiFi-connection for cloud-backups. Files are saved in plain text format for maximum reliability, minimal file size, and longest anticipated support.

Apart from a backspace key, there is no way to navigate through the text, and the small screen only displays ten lines of text. Drafting and editing have been separated with the intent to force the writer to keep going. For editing or printing, the text is then transferred to a computer using the WiFi connection.

The Freewrite.

The device is stated to have a “4+ week battery life with typical usage”, which is defined as half an hour of writing each day with WiFi turned off. That’s a strange way to communicate that the machine runs 14 hours on one battery charge, and when I asked the makers how much power it needs they answered that they “don’t communicate this information”. Nevertheless, enabling 14 hours of writing already beats the potential of the average laptop by a factor of three.

Hardware Word Processors

Another type of digital typewriter is the hardware word processor. Before word processing became software on a personal computer in the 1980s, the word processor was a stand-alone device. Like a typewriter, a hardware word processor is only useful to write on, but it has the added capability of editing the text before printing. Although hardware word processors work and look like computers, they are non-programmable, single-purpose devices. ³⁰³¹

The great advantage of a hardware word processor is that both writing and editing can happen on the same machine — a typewriter or a machine like the Freewrite requires another machine to do the editing (unless you write multiple versions of the same text). The hardware word processor virtually disappeared when the general-purpose computer appeared. One notable exception is the Alphasmart, which was produced from 1992 until 2013.

This rugged portable machine is still widely traded on the internet and developed a cult following, especially among writers. The Alphasmart was conceived as an affordable computer for schools, but the low price was not its only appeal. The machine responded to the need for a tool that would make kids concentrate on writing, and not on editing or formatting text. Although it has full editing capabilities, the small screen (showing 6 lines in the lastest model) invites writing rather than excessive editing.

The alphasmart.

The Alphasmart is especially notable for its energy efficiency, using as little electricity as an electronic calculator. The latest model could run for more than 700 hours on just three AA-batteries, which corresponds to a power use of 0.01 watt. The machine has a full-sized keyboard but a small, electronic calculator-like display screen, which requires little electricity. It has limited memory and goes into sleep-mode between keystrokes. The Alphasmart can be connected directly to a printer via a USB-cable, bypassing a computer entirely if the aim is to produce a paper document. Transferring texts to the computer for digital transmission, storage or further editing also happens via cable. ³²³³

Interestingly, Alphasmart released a more high-tech version of the device in 2002, the Alphasmart Dana. It was equipped with WiFi for transmitting documents, it had 40 times more memory than its predecessor, and it featured a touchscreen. The result was that battery life dropped twentyfold to 25 hours, clearly showing how quickly the energy use of digital technology can spiral out of control — although even this machine still used only 0.14 watts of power, roughly 100 times less than the average laptop. ³²³³

Of course, a low-tech office doesn’t exclude a real computer, a device that does it all. A small tablet with a wireless keyboard can be operated for as little as 3W of electricity and many of the capabilities of a laptop (including the distractions). An alternative to the use of a tablet is a Raspberry Pi computer, combined with a portable USB-screen. Depending on the model, a Raspberry Pi draws 0.5 to 2.5 watts of power, with an extra 6 or 7 watts for the screen. A Pi can serve as a fully functional computer with internet access, but it’s also very well suited for a single-purpose, distraction-less word processing machine without internet access. Such machines could be powered with a solar system small enough to fit on the corner of a desk.

Dot-Matrix Printers

Unless we revert to the typewriter, the office also needs a more sustainable way of printing. Since the 1980s, most printing in offices is done with a laser printer. These machines require a lot of energy: even when we take into account their higher printing speed, a laser printer uses 10 to 20 times as much electricity than a inkjet printer. ³⁴ Unfortunately, inkjet printers are much more expensive to use because the industry makes a profit by selling overpriced ink cartridges.

Until the arrival of the laser printer, all printing in offices was done by dot-matrixprinters. Their power use and printing speed is comparable to that of inkjetprinters, but they are much cheaper to use — in fact, it’s the cheapest printing technology available. Like a typewriter, a dot-matrixprinter is an impact printer that makes use of an ink ribbon. These ribbons are sold as commodities and cost very little. Unlike a typewriter, the individual characters of a matrix printer are composed of small dots.

A dot-matrix printer.

Dot-matrix printers are still for sale, for applications where printing costs are critical. Although they’re not suited for printing images or colours, they are perfect for the printing of text. They are relatively noisy, which is why they were sometimes placed under a sound-absorbing hood. There is no practical low-tech alternative for the copier machine, which only appeared in the 1950s. However, since a photocopier is a combination of a scanner and a laserprinter, the copying of paper documents could happen by using a combination of a computer with a scanner and a dot-matrix or inkjet printer.

The information society promises to dematerialise society and make it more sustainable, but modern office and knowledge work has itself become a large and rapidly growing consumer of energy and other resources. Choosing low-tech office equipment would be a great start to address this problem. Such a strategy is especially significant in that the energy use goes far beyond the operational electricity use on-site.

Thanks to Elizabeth Shove, who pointed me to some of the most important references, and to Karolien Buurman and Thomas Op de Beeck, who made me (re)discover the dot-matrixprinter.

Evolution of the office building in the course of the 20th century: Towards an intelligent building, Elzbieta Niezabitowska & Dorota Winnicka-Jaskowska, in Intelligent Buildings International, 3:4, 238-249, 2011. ↩︎
Economy and Society, Max Weber, 1922. ↩︎
Woman’s place is at the typewriter, Margery W. Davies, 1982. Quoted by the Early Office Museum ↩︎
Machines in the Office, Rodney Dale and Rebecca Weaver, 1993. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Studies in Industry and Society), JoAnne Yates, 1989 ↩︎ ↩︎
Early Office Museum, website. ↩︎ ↩︎
The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press), Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper, 2003. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Office Management, Geoffrey S. Childs, Edwin J. Clapp, Bernard Lichtenberg, 1919. ↩︎
Calculating Machines, Adding Machines. Smithsonian National Museum of American History ↩︎ ↩︎
Innovation Junctions: Office Technologies in the Netherlands, 1880-1980, Onno de Wit, Jan van den Ende, Johan Schot and Ellen van Oost, in Technology and Culture, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 50-72 ↩︎
The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press), Anton A. Huurdeman, 2003. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Teleprinter, Encyclopedia Britannica. ↩︎
Nobody seems to have researched the energy use of pre-digital office equipment, so this information is partly derived from an online search through the databases of eBay, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Early Office Museum, and partly on fragmentary information from secondary sources. For example, a 1949 survey of the equipment in high school office machine courses in the state of Massachussetts shows that the majority of typewriters, calculators, adding machines, duplicators and addressing machines were manually operated, although most of these machines were less than 10 years old. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century, Richard Polt, 2015 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Gift of Fire, A Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing, Sara Baase, 1997 ↩︎
How the computer changed the office forever, BBC News, August 2013. ↩︎
Mundane Materials at Work: Paper in Practice, Sari Yli-Kauhaluoma, Mika Pantzar and Sammy Toyoki, Third International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, Corfu, Greece, 16-18 June, 2011. ↩︎ ↩︎
Productivity and multi-screen computer displays (PDF), Janet Colvin, Nancy Tobler, James A. Anderson, Rocky Mountain Communication Review, Volume 2:1, Summer 2004, Pages 31-53. ↩︎
Evaluating user expectations for widescreen content layout, Joseph H. Goldberg and Jonathan Helfman, Oracle, 2007 ↩︎ ↩︎
Are two monitors better than one?, J.W: Owens, J. Teves, B. Nguyen, A. Smith, M.C. Phelps, Software Usability Research Laboratory, August 2012 ↩︎
Are two better than one? A comparison between single and dual monitor work stations in productivity and user’s windows management style. Chen Ling, Alex Stegman, Chintan Barhbaya, Randa Shehab, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, September 2016 ↩︎ ↩︎
http://www.multi-monitors.com/Twelve_Monitor_Display_Arrays_s/53748.htm ↩︎
The best USB-powered portable monitors, Nerd Techy, 2016 ↩︎
Trends in office internal gains and the impact on space heating and cooling, James Johnston et. al, CIBSE Technical Symposium, September 2011 ↩︎
Employees waste 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions, The Telegraph, June 2015 ↩︎
Internet Addiction: A New Clinical Phenomenon and Its Consequences, Kimberly S. Young, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48 No.4, December 2004. ↩︎
The Binge Breaker, The Atlantic, November 2016. ↩︎
The future of writing looks like the past, Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, May 2016. ↩︎
Freewrite, website. ↩︎
Word Processing (History of), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Vol. 49, pp. 268-78, 1992. ↩︎
A brief history of word processing (through 1986), Brian Kunde. ↩︎
AlphaSmart: a history of one of Ed-Tech’s Favorite (Drop-Kickable) Writing tools, Audrey Watters, Hackeducation, July 2015. ↩︎ ↩︎
AlphaSmart: Providing a Smart Solution for one Classroom-Computing “Job”, James Sloan, Inno Sight Institute, April 2012. ↩︎ ↩︎
Zeven instap zwart-wit laserprinters vergelijktest, Hardware.info, December 2014. The data were corrected for the higher printing speed of the laser printer. ↩︎