Today we turn over DontFlyGo.com to guest poster Felicia Baritz-Savage who talks to us about going green on the go!
I’m afraid I have to confess a terrible affliction. When I travel, even for the shortest trips, I take a large part of my life with me. Along with the sunglasses and sunscreen go the Kindle, iPad and iPhone, at least one Macbook Pro, a 4G hotspot, and other tech gadgets unmentionable here. And while these devices help save paper, people can still strive to be more ecofriendly. Carrying that many battery-powered devices will turn certainly sharpen your eye for outlets in bus depots and train stations, but may also result in scoliosis and a salty attitude towards those who can throw on a laptop bag and be done with it. But where’s the rest of your STUFF?! For a less backbreaking, energy efficient way to travel, the beautiful advent of cloud computing is coming to whisk away my woes on a gleeful, carefree nimbus.
When traveling the world, there are many different ways in which the cloud allows people to be more eco-friendly and leave less of a carbon footprint along the way. Traveling light is a priority of many people who enjoy being on the go, and that doesn’t mean they are always willing to give up the conveniences and luxuries of daily life. Sure I could just pick one book and curate a puny 8gb of music to stuff into my phone for a 3-day train ride, but do I want to? The cloud allows people to take their lives on the go but with only one device. The day Google Music went into beta and I realized I could take my massive, sprawling music collection with me anywhere as an app on my phone I about hit the roof. Whether we know it or not, cloud computing is having a pretty tremendous impact on the way we travel.
Our super phones are slowly becoming the center of our technological lives. Mobile Internet has liberated travelers while at the same time mitigating the amount of energy we use on the go. Instead of carrying a digital camera, backup batteries and a laptop onto which we can offload photos, a traveler can just use a tablet or smart phone to take photos, though you run the risk of looking ridiculous if you take a photo with a tablet. The photos are magically cast into a cloud where they take up Internet space, but not precious, limited physical memory. Fewer devices = less energy used = better for the environment. Using the cloud, a person can still have access to his or her favorite music and movies to enjoy on those long journeys to new places, and also store the hundreds of photographs that are taken along the way.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the cloud and its importance to “our future” and “the way businesses is done in the 21st century.” There is a cloud computing providers are cropping up like cupcake shops. Companies like Amazon and VMWare generally handle business clouds whereas consumer clouds are better handled by Apple and Google with their respective and relatively low-rent cloud options.
Cloud computing has had an enormous impact in many different areas and industries, and travel is no exception. Travelers have found that vacationing with the cloud makes touring a new land easier than ever — and also has a positive impact on the environment. It’s truly allowing people to see the world, while preserving our world as well.