Do we need to delete to keep the web sustainable?

WNYC New Tech City “The World Would be a Better Place if We [DELETED] More”

The title of this piece is a bit misleading, because on the cognitive side it is really unclear to me that forcing ourselves to memorize things would make our lives better (those who know me know that I am “anti-memorization”, perhaps in part because I am not so good at memorizing things).

But what I am more interested in has to do with the sustainability of the web itself. For all its promise to reduce the costs of transporting ourselves and our information in the analog world, the web still is a technology based on consumption of electricity. The critical question is “how much electricity?”, and perhaps “where does that electricity come from?”. These are questions implied but not answered by this piece.