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Comment by alduin32 | Hacker News Reader

With climate change and our general impact on environment worsening each year, our relationship with technology is starting to be like a big elephant in the room. Do people really think a sustainable and equitable society is possible while having microprocessors and telecommunication devices in beds ?

This kind of luxury will always be reserved to the wealthiest in society, and its availability dependent on the relentless exploitation of land and human beings.

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Why does it sound like you're proposing that nobody should have fancy things, instead of proposing that everyone should have access to fancy things?

If everyone has fancy things then there will be even less environment to go around.

I empathize with what you're saying, but "we shouldn't have things people want" is a solution to climate change in the same way that "we shouldn't have gravity" is a solution to air travel. It's not gonna work. Find another approach.

It's an overpriced bed with a tiny computer in it. It uses the same resources as a cheap bed + a tiny computer and lots of people have those. There's no extra exploitation going on here, these beds are just expensive because they're paying a bunch of engineers to do questionably necessary things.

The problem with activists is so many of them are foolish and just like complaining about things. Go find an actual problem to solve.

> Do people really think a sustainable and equitable society is possible while having microprocessors and telecommunication devices in beds ?

You realize the cost of the chips in the bed are a lot less than the cost to even ship a mattress right?

Puritan morality is so deeply embedded in our culture people don't even realise they're repeating it.

If I told them they couldn't have a coal-fired home blacksmithing setup "for the environment" then this would seem unfair.

But a 10c microchip? Suddenly this must be evidence of excess! (Even though the price represents that fact that it's a staggeringly efficient use of resources that also has supply-swappable carbon impact).

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