Podcast - Screaming in the Cloud with Corey Quinn

I recently had the pleasure to be a guest on the Screaming in the Cloud podcast, and talk about cloud sustainability with Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group.

You can listen to our conversation (or read the transcript) at lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/the-4d-approach-to-cloud-sustainability-with-catharine-strauss/ or on your podcast platform of choice.

As a postscript to the conversation, I have a few additional thoughts to share here.

Systems Thinking in a World of Boundaries

So much needs to change in the industry to alter our perception of the cloud as limitless and infinitely scalable. We’ve done such a good job building systems that give us everything at our fingertips that we’ve lost track of what the costs are of an always-on globally distributed system of energy consuming devices just waiting to be put to use.

When we operate under constraints, we have to spend time weighing tradeoffs and determining what the best decision is. This often requires that we go back and ask questions about what VALUES underlie the goals that we are trying to achieve. So in a world where “infinitely scalable” is part of the sales pitch, it is important to stop and ask “What is it FOR?” and make sure that the purpose and the impact of what we are building is still in alignment with our goals for short-term successes AND long-term happiness.

Without time to have in-depth discussions like this, it is tempting to throw up our own boundaries in an attempt to make the world more predictable and optimized for a particular purpose. That’s how, bit by bit, we start to put blinders on the larger impact of our actions until the aggregated impact of something like climate chance seems completely impossible to change.

Take a moment today, if you can, and sit with how you currently feel about the decisions you made today. Are there any that don’t ring true? If so, start to unpick what it would take for you to be in a position to make a choice that feels more aligned with your long-term happiness. You don’t need to change the decision today — but if you’re truly committed to a different outcome, you deserve to take the time to understand what contributed to the choice you made.

Understanding the pressures and constraints that we are under today is the first key to unlocking how to act differently in the future. But I believe that it is possible and necessary to our mental health as we are confronted with a rapidly changing climate and even faster moving cultural changes.