But now, says the Once-ler, Now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
Why aim small in this era of fast computers with plenty of RAM? A number of reasons, but the ones that are most important to me are:
Fewer moving parts. It’s easier to create more robust systems and to fix things when they do go wrong.
Small software is faster. Fewer bits to download and clog your computer’s memory.
Reduced power consumption. This is important on a “save the planet” scale, but also on the very local scale of increasing the battery life of your phone and laptop.
The light, frugal aesthetic. That’s personal, I know, but as you’ll see, I’m not alone.
The virtue of thin sheet metal in giving the greatest glitter for a grain of gold was exploited in the earliest days of metallurgy. However, before the days of rolled sheet and drawn wire, most metal objects were made by hammering and were basically three-dimensional in form.
[In contrast] look at the simple drop press — it’s unmodulated blow striking in a single direction symbolizes much of nineteenth-century mechanized production. To make multiple stampings, stacks of very thin metal sheets were superimposed under the hammer, and the final profile with moderately high relief was gradually achieved as finished sheets were removed from the bottom and new ones added at the top.
When the drop press was used to shape large areas of thin sheet metal, the aesthetic qualities of the surface became divorced from the underlying substance, and decoration became independent of the body needed to support it. In any object there is a natural relationship between the surface and the bulk, that is, between its one-, two-, and three-dimensional aspects. The fakery involved in applying gold or silver playing on a solid copper object is quite different from the deception of an ornately stamped piece of thin sheet brass. Compare a magnificent ormolu furniture fitting or even a gilded plaster picture frame with a cheap lamp base embossed in thin sheet brass. In the former, the surface is simply and honestly applied for its optical effect alone; in the latter the fakery is fundamental for it is dimensionally misleading.