Sustainability != Environmental Protection

This video (thanks Mike!), combined with recent conversations at work, have convinced me to further examine the possibility of being both an IT/security person and someone who wants to make a difference in the world. It sounds good, it sounds feasible, however I have a very hard time relating the two seemingly separate roles.

The possibility of helping clients with making their IT departments more sustainable sounds awesome in theory. However, the issue that I've been running into is that sustainability isn't just about protecting the environment, it's more than that. Social responsibility is a big component that, in my opinion, must be included in sustainability. We may end up having a great air quality one day, but we also need to make sure people's basic human rights are met.

Increased virtualization and more efficient HVAC designs for data centers are great. Reducing our impact on the Earth is a step in the right direction. I can help clients with that. But what I cannot figure out is how to help an IT department tackle the social responsibility component. Perhaps that's representative of the fact that I myself do not know how to best make a difference in my own career on social justice issues.

Have I forgotten how to be an IT person? Computers were designed to solve problems. It should be easy to use computers to solve these world issues, right? I think I need to just geek out for a while and figure out how to do this...