It’s difficult not to mention technology when we’re talking about changing things. Controlling our data or the environmental footprint of our online activities are just a few of the next big challenges in the coming years, with the Internet spreading its tentacles further and further and continuously adding to its own massive size.
Every year, millions upon millions of new users join the “Net” and broaden the data flow shared between users. Adding to the issue is that long-time users keep increasing data usage connecting more and more parts of their lives to the web, like sports, health, work, love… Tools multiply and replicate, what with computers, then phones, then tablets, now watches, fridges and soon pretty much everything in the house.
What makes it even worse? It’s all free! Facebook, Google, so many powerful services are offered for free… I read somewhere that “when it’s free, it means you’re the product…” And that’s exactly what’s interesting to me today. Why is it free? How can it be free when the biggest companies of the web are becoming the biggest corporations in the world?
Lucky for us, there is a great number of initiatives that aim to reverse the trend and I want to share with you about a simple habit that each of us is into: searching the Web! Rather than generating ads worth a small fortune every year in a system that is out of our control, a few persons told themselves that they could change this. Not only in making the web respect us and our data, i.e. without selling us out to the first guy coming along, but even also set up a carbon offset system, or a donation to charity option to balance our online activity.
Nothing too technical here, you just need to add an extension to your navigator. Choose Lilo or Ecosia depending on what you prefer, and then change the address of your default search engine and the trick is done. You are now officially changing the world just by surfing the web. Very simple, but someone had to think of it!
