(re) newal at Redemtech

Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you have to grab with both hands and hang on for dear life.

It was just about this time two years ago when the opportunity to write Green IT For Dummies came my way. Despite swearing I’d never write a book again, this book felt too important to ignore. It needed to be written and I knew that if I agreed to write it, it would get written, and so I agreed. Writing nights and weekends with a lot of help from co-authors and contributors, we had a manuscript together in several months. By April 2009, the book was in print.

In the course of my research for the book I found Redemtech. I confess that before that time I had been using computers for more than three decades and never had given any thought whatsoever about what actually happened to them once they were no longer useful to me. It had always been somebody else’s problem. Once I knew, however, I could no longer ignore the issues.

For the last eleven years I’ve been working as an IT industry analyst, focusing on emerging technologies in general and IT security in particular. Looking at IT security over time trains one to think from the perspective of governance, risk and compliance. This same framework lends itself well to the areas of e-waste, where all organizations need to concern themselves with both environmental and data security risk, compliance with environmental regulations on local, state, national and international levels, and governance that insures the compliance and risk mitigation.

Although I’ve been using technology for “a very long time,” I really began to pay attention to its unchecked growth, its world-changing impact, its dramatic transformative influence, in the mid 90’s. In 1993 I co-authored the first edition of The Internet For Dummies, with absolutely no clue about its import. A hundred and eighty thousand copies later, I started to get it, and rewrote that book every year for the next eight years, trying to keep up with the onslaught of change. It’s 2010, that book in its 12th edition, with more than 7 million copies in print in more than 30 languages.

We’re once again at the threshold of dramatic, world-altering, unthinkably rapid change. Technology is taking a big role, but much of what is happening now is outside our direct control, and we’ll be doing hand-to-hand combat to try to adapt ourselves to the changes we’ll be forced to confront.

Redemtech has invited me to blog. I invite you to join me as I explore what’s happening in the world of e-waste, technology and the environment, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, green IT, IT (especially data) security, the politics of technology, and the countless ways these issues impact us, our organizations and our future. I propose to share, chronicle, posit, provoke, incite, and engage with you around these topics and others of interest to you, if you let me know what they are. So post a comment. Tell me what you’d like to hear about. And let the conversations begin. Let’s have at it!

Comments

[Carol Baroudi]

Hi Jose - The rapid proliferation of personal devices is indeed a challenge. It's great when organizations take responsibility for all the gadgets they provide. It's also great when organizations enable employees to appropriately dispose of their electronic discards. As individual consumers I think we have to be on the lookout for retailers who will provide responsible take back. I know that when I was ready to trash my defunct gps I found a site that would pay for it if was of any worth but promised to dispose of it appropriately even if it had no resell / refurb value. There's certainly a need an ambitious e-stewards recycler that can service consumers directly - the problems are growing faster than the solutions.

[Jose G. Barraza]

Hi Carol, I enjoyed the cartoon humor at the beginning of each section in your book “GreenIT for Dummies”. It made serious topics easier to read.

What do you think about the growing number of portable devices (mini laptops, PDA’s, Ipods, Navigational Systems, etc.) an individual carries today? Most of these devices perform similar functions. How does one remain Green and get to enjoy the latest and the greatest toys?