1 Mind over matter: greening the new economy
Charles Leadbeater and Rebecca Willis
The new economy
Shawn Fanning, the 19-year-old renegade founder of Napster, is an unlikely environmental hero. Napster is an online music community, based around a technology that is simple yet powerful. It allows a computer user, armed with a modem and the Napster software, to download a piece of music – as a computer file – via the internet.
At first sight it may appear that this technology has little to do with tackling climate change or pollution. Yet, on closer examination, the environmental potential of Napster is considerable. If the entire music industry were to embrace Napster-style technology, we would be able to phase out the production of compact discs, ...
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