Jevons paradox
The Jevons paradox is the observation, first made by economist William Stanley Jevons in 1865, that improving the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase rather than decrease its total consumption.
Jevons observed that more efficient steam engines did not reduce British coal consumption: by making coal more economical to use, they multiplied its applications.
Application to digital technology
The pattern is systematic. Each generation of hardware is more efficient per operation, and each generation performs far more operations. Storage becomes cheaper, so nothing is deleted. Networks become faster, so content becomes heavier.
The rebound effect is the modern formulation of the same mechanism.
Consequence
Efficiency is necessary but not sufficient. Without a limit set deliberately, gains are absorbed by additional use. That limit is the purpose of digital sobriety.
