If we thought that human beings were wasteful and destroying our own planet as well of ourselves, we have to weigh this notion against the fact of what computers and digital technology has done for humanity: it is given us a license to be even more wasteful than we ever were.
When we consider that despite our ecological ethics and idealisms, the fact that human beings continually produce things under the name of progress that generate exponentially more waste and A corresponding attitude which compensates for that generational excess (call conventional philosophy) we might realize that the sensible conclusion is that we are not destroying anything nor ruining any and ecology at all, but just fulfilling our niche in the greater universe as we only are able to. Accordingly, we will never destroy ourselves, we will always endure and excel. That’s what human beings do. 
Consider intellectual generation itself. Personally, I do not think that we are thinking anything more than we ever have, and I don’t think we’re thinking better than we ever have as a species; however, the digital revolution has allowed us to believe through the sheer ability to produce text, that we are creating “More intelligentce”, or whatever you would call it. The sheer vast and huge amount of textual production it’s a waste. That’s just a fact. It allows us to view the world as if we are thinking more, thinking better; having more ideas to contemplate is surely better, isn’t it?  
But in the brute fact, it is just a generation of things for the sake of generating things. Of course, we put them to use. But just think about how many computer processors we have to generate, how much more solar panels we have to generate, how much more fuel, how much more energy we have to generate in order to sustain all this text, all this “great thinking”, all the “personal expression”.
The simple fact is that human beings generate more and more waste every hour of the day, exponentially more than we did the day before. 
No judgement. Just an ask for an acceptance of reality. 
One response to “Digital is the License for Waste”
Well said! we are drowned with all types of waste!