This is a lengthy, A1 story in the weekend paper, but it does little to illuminate the topic. Here’s how I would summarize the story: “Students lack the self-discipline to do their homework because of easy access to technology and the diverting experiences it enables. Technology is good, but this behavior is bad. Teachers don’t know what to do about it, and parents do little about it, too.” Boring, right?

Come on, NYT. We’ve already done the hand-wringing. You say that plugged-in students lack focus, but guess what? So does the story itself. Instead of rolling modern life into one big mess of tangled wires, let’s get specific: Start looking at specific problems (in this example, say: parenting and technology, or technology aptitude and the college application process, or technology use in the classroom) and specific solutions (e.g., media literacy 2.0, how parents and educators are setting boundaries that work, profiles of teachers who are making low-tech learning effective for high-tech students, etc.).

Or, for starters, let’s start making important distinctions between differences in technology use. Facebook and Final Cut Pro are very different technology distractions. Texting in class, texting during homework, and texting during dinner are all separate behaviors worth treating differently, both in a story and in real life. Treat them that way. Once you break experience down, you can begin to ask the real questions about what’s good, what’s bad, what’s neutral — and what should we do about it?

OK, I know this is just sort of a rant, not a real post, but come on. I care about this stuff. Can’t we get some good coverage out there? This where you, my occasional readers, make recommendations on better articles, books, and other media to feed my brain.

Honestly, I feel bad enough when I buy something on Amazon that I could have probably picked up locally with a short detour on my bike ride home, but when I am confronted with excessive packing like this (below), I feel especially bad. And this snap below isn’t the worst example by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s nice to hear that Amazon really is using the feedback customer’s submit for good. I hope more companies heed the example of the Philips toothrbrush mentioned in the story.

“[For the revised packaging, Philip's packing company] could use a single material, and it went through a machine just once instead of the two to three times required for the traditional package. ‘From design to finish, it’s as efficient as it gets,’ he said.”

“The media is very good at making itself seem like something other than a business (and there are a lot of problems with what business it does manage) — but if you realise that every edition, every issue, every article, every bulletin, every thing made by the media is a product, then you start to think differently about these situations.” — Bobbie Johnson

The discussion of editors’ role in “shipping product” for the media business is great, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking more about who plays the role of “editor” in other non-media jobs. I work at the intersection of these two areas — editor and product manager — and my partner is a QA engineer, so lots of these issues are top of mind for me on a daily basis.

In my experience, what Ford says is true; being an editor is about “the willingness to schedule the living shit out of everything, the ability to see patterns, a total dedication to shipping, and willingness to say ‘no’”. That he goes on to recognize that this means “you start to have this very interesting source of power inside your organization, especially given the changes coming in web content, where you need structure and connections in order to play with others” is a really awesome insight.

Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

- Kay Ryan

Yesterday was Earth2Tech’s first conference, Green:Net, here in San Francisco. I moderated a panel on software, with Jeremy Jaech, the CEO of Verdiem; Richard Barber, the CTO of CarbonFlow; Jonathan Gay, founder of Greenbox; Raffi Krikorian, co-founder of Wattzon; and Alex Wissner-Gross, founder of CO2 Stats. I’ll also did some short video interviews with speakers, including folks from Dell, Cisco, GE, IBM and Microsoft. They’ll be up on the Earth2Tech site soon — I’ll post links when they’re available.

I also recently completed two feature articles. One, inspired by my experience with the “greening of Green:Net,” was for MPI’s ONE+ magazine; it’s a piece on alternatives to standard carbon offsets for events. It takes a look at how some event planners are reinvesting the money they could have spent on carbon offsets in other ways: local projects, deep carbon accounting, and more. The other, out this month from Sustainable Industries, looks at new business models in the recycling industry. (Get a sneak peek here!)

And finally, the Spot.Us story on solar power in the Bay Area that I helped edit also got some good news this month: On Earth magazine is going to publish the story and refund the original donors. I met with Dave Cohn just before that happened to talk about the Spot.Us project, and I’m really looking forward to being involved in the project going forward. While it’s a bad time for the media business, it’s a pretty exciting time for media on the content side — there’s a lot of opportunity to experiment and explore.

“When the reporting process plays out in public, that’s a good thing. Readers can and do participate. Their participation has a salutary effect on quality — millions of amateur editors catch a lot that a few professional ones miss. And the process of constant checks on the unfolding story produce incentives to keep pushing.”

Isn’t that what I was just saying about Spot.Us?

I think the same thing holds true for blogging. As Om is often reminding us, good blog posts are short because the story is always unfolding. You build your argument over time, not just over the course of a single story.

The Bay Area is often a leader on emerging technology, so why doesn’t every homeowner in the Bay Area have solar power? Why don’t we see solar panels everywhere? Since the gas crisis of the 1970s people have been saying that solar power will eventually get cheaper. Is that time coming? How much does it cost to get solar power installed on the typical house? How long does it take to pay for itself in cost savings from PG&E bills? If the cost is low, or the return quick, why aren’t solar companies doing more to promote it? Maybe the move is just around the corner with the next president pushing for more alternative power, but as one of the more forward thinking states in the union, California should be leading the way.

I’m excited to get started, but wanted to just tease the project a bit here first.

I love checking out the Pitch page on Spot.Us and seeing that people (funders? potential readers?) have left comments for Aaron (and me!) about what they’re thinking the story should be. One of the best parts of being a journalist for me is coming up with a topic I’m curious about and talking to everyone about it — friends, people I meet on the bus platform or at a bar, coworkers, and so on — to build out a better perspective on the topic.  I love the idea that projects like Spot.Us could help improve journalism before it happens by broadening that conversation. Comment threads on articles point out blind spots when they’ve already been missed — this could help writers identify them before they happen.

Now, on to the work.

This weekend also kicked off the latest Google Isn’t Really Green hullabaloo. In case you were under a rock, the gist is this: The UK Times published a story about research on the carbon footprint of Internet activities — including Google searches — that estimated that each search query is responsible for about 7 grams of CO2. Therefore, by the logic of much coverage, Google searching is a carbon intensive activity. The story got tons of play, but I was a bit skeptical.

I edited Om’s post on Sunday night about the story and worked with him to get some context in there — carbon emissions from a small car. But there was more to it than just that. While Om’s suggestions that we should all do our part are welcome reminders, and while Katie’s take — that Google’s working on its footprint — is spot on, well, it just seems to me that Googling — or using the Internet in general — isn’t really the problem. I think there are bigger fish to fry. Thankfully, I didn’t have to write that story myself. My friend Alexis Madrigal, a writer over at the WIRED Science blog, did. You can check it out here.

Now, let’s stop talking about Google and get back to working on stuff that matters.