"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough
The cloud as a business is mostly about building products that address ever changing needs and making the clients more dependent on said products. There are no environmental restrictions here you could grow for as long as user needs grow.
I really think the opposite is true, what makes you think that?
Everything else links back to matter. Even my "internet points" on HN are tied back to the food I had to eat to type in that sweet sweet snark.
This notion that economics isn't ultimately a resource scheduling theory that falls out of a base set of behaviors (commerce). If we removed choice, we get operations research.
Capitalism is akin to wanting to cook a hotdog on a campfire and burning down an entire house to do it.
Cloud is still computing. Computers with a finite life that need to be produced, from natural resources.
Computing that needs to be powered and cooled.
Those have environmental impacts and very much align with OPs quote.
First off, where do you think "the cloud" comes from? Even if we assume 100% renewable grid (which is currently impossible) the computers that run the cloud require an enormous amount raw materials and labor to manufacture.
But far more importantly, where does your clients capital come from?
The greatest accounting trick capitalism every pulled was to get people to think of individual parts of a system rather then the entire thing.
There's real magical thinking involved to think that capital just appears in these clients at now real cost. At some point labor and resource exploitation is required to create economic value which is then passed around throughout the system. Just because you can skim off some surplus value selling some SaaS product in the cloud doesn't mean that the value you are paid with doesn't come from the exploitation of resources.
Finally, you can easily dispel this myth by looking at the current state of our global environment. Show me any period of economic growth that isn't also tied to increased energy and resource usage.
We may well develop technologies that allow us to generate more with less, but there are limits to this.
Yes, Coca-cola may invent a new soda, but that soda will always have some material inputs.
Cloud computing most definitely does not escape this - it relies on massive networks of physical infrastructure that require huge investments of natural resources and human capital to build.
Even the monetization of things that appear at first blush to avoid this issue such as the monetization of human attention do not do so in reality as our mental faculties themselves rely on the continued sustenance of our physical bodies.
All this demand for software and ever changing needs, and more cloud computing environment is coming from somewhere. You want to know where?
Merely 2 decades ago, the average household had one computer in the house, and it was typically a desktop, and the adults and teenagers had had cellphones.
Now, almost everyone that is middle class or above has multiple computing devices in their possession at all times. Every member of the family has their own laptop or tablet and cellphone, probably even a smartwatch or two, even kids as young as 4. There's probably multiple TV screens and gaming consoles as well. Devices that are designed to be replaced in a mere 2-3 years through planned obsolesce. We have more cheap shit than ever before and it gets thrown in the trash at an ever increasing rate. There are screens literally everywhere now: My gas station pump, the wine and beer isle at my grocery store, at the checkout line, walking out into the parking lot, on my wrist, in my pocket, at my coffee shop, in my restaurants.
That results in more companies needing to have digital presences, more apps, more games, more features, more data collection and spyware tracking you around the internet, more ML models being trained and draining energy, more crypto-mining and 4,000 watt PSU's coming online, so on and so forth.
All this stuff requires an ever increasing amount of rare earth materials and burned fossil fuels to produce and operate.
Sure, but that also increases Google's net profit and allows its users to make more queries. That profit is then maybe invested to penetrate new market segments like transportation or hardware production, or is distributed among CEOs who buy bigger houses and more cars.
In essence, the efficiency gains of improving the algorithm are lost because of the free-flowing streams of capital.
The efficiency gains of improving the algorithm ARE free-flowing streams of capital.
Computers need matter, energy, and space.
Lots and lots of apps are going to be rolled up into forms solutions, for example.
And more importantly, efficiency in the consumption is not translated in efficiency in the use of resources (which is the important one): transporting goods by horse vs faster transportation with combustion engines.
But with growth beyond a certain point, cash flow becomes so significant and so many fewer people are handling it that the room for misguided actions, not just unforseen but often hidden or obscured, can quickly overcome the profits from much earlier technology milestones which took much longer for the entire org to implement. Which can not be replaced unless more technology breakthroughs are forthcoming, but even when a steady stream of excellent new technology keeps coming down the pipeline it could still be a sinking ship. Then if only the top people think it's not seaworthy, or know what they've done that might make it so, they're going to completely deceive the rest of the crew as effectively as possible or all the lifeboats could be used up.
When it comes to building cash flow, profits, shareholder value, and overall company valuation not every economically sensible executive is going to pursue or achieve the same balance among these, regardless of motivation.
When a company originally thrives because the early talent can make profits that are good, it can be the firm foundation for what could be long-term, even exponential growth.
Later leadership which does not always have equal talent for profits will often have more experience utilizing cash flow itself to substitute as a resource for bonuses, dividends, and things like that when much needed technology boosts are not the windfall they once were.
The net effect is people make money for a while then the technology is wasted.
Because profits actually weren't pursued enough, and cash flow too much instead
Like when a huge company acquires a rapidly-progressing technology group but no more progress occurs after that, or progress becomes intentionally discontinued or even reversed.
Like a gravitational field so massive that it draws in other planets and absorbs their potential for continued growth, rather than leveraging progress using the overwhelming resources.
A smallco that made excellent profits primarily from innovation itself, looks excellent on paper because it is actually a good acquisition target. When absorbed into a bigco their impressive profits no longer add up to more than a drop in the huge bucket so focus ends up being placed elsewhere besides the profit-making innovation that was supposed to be so promising.
It's Zeno's Paradox - if you have use half of the resources, and then half of the remaining, and then half of that remaining, you could continue forever.
We need to focus on sustainability, otherwise Mars will also be unsustainable.
Just wait until oxygen itself becomes a commodity, like in the film "Total Recall". Except unlike in film, there's no deus ex machina native ancient technology to suddenly make the entire atmosphere breathable.