Re: <nettime> Energy Consumption of an Avator in Second Life

[Alex Foti <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

Absolutely brilliant post! I guess one could console oneself with the
fact that the torching of le pen's hq in second life did not release
any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...

In fact, these calculations push me to pose larger questions: how many
kwh per year are consumed to operate the Net and how many could be
saved by using the most energy-efficient servers available on the
market? Say we abolished private transportation and jet aviation and
invest heavily in passive housing and renewables, would a hypothetical
network society of 8 billion people be feasible without burning fossil
fuels?

ciao, lx

On 2/7/07, Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:

>from http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
>
>He quotes Philip Rosedale, the head of Linden Lab, the company behind
>the virtual world: "We're running at full power all the time, so
>we consume an enormous amount of electrical power in co-location
>facilities [where they house their 4,000 server computers]. We're
>running out of power for the square feet of rack space that we've
>got machines in. We can't for example use [blade] servers right now
>because they would simply require more electricity than you could get
>for the floor space they occupy."
 <...>


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