The energy cost of the inter-tubes

I think Apples' already is.

MS's is

More and more I find myself using the internet to shop because it saves time and gas.

Some bits are good: If you receive and/or pay a bill online, or if you're shopping online then there's quite a big saving.

Some bits are questionable: if you wanted to waffle about internet energy use with a guy in Arizona and another in NZ in real life, it'd be a huge energy cost but you probably just wouldn't bother, so it's hard to call it a saving. Likewise, if I find myself wondering how many miles of gas pipeline there are in Macedonia I can either make a trip to the library, waste a few electrons and go look it up, or just leave as one of life's little mysteries: It's 167 miles, and somewhere God has just killed a kitten.

Other bits are a complete waste. The planet has spent 4.54 billion years without feeling the need to apply captions to cats, for instance, so there's not really any saving there.



And don't even get me started about Second Life or World of Warcraft.

It just wasn't realized until recently. Who knows how many people went through life with a sad, empty feeling yet never knew why?

(but not verifying the accuracy) http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724 -second entry -

at 350,000 GWh/year total required to support internet in US, you have the equivalent output of 40 1GW plants operative at 100% capacity factor.

I'd like to see the above point about the savings that result. I suspect it in mail alone it is pretty dramatic.

depends on how you do the accounting.

I'm actually not that worried about whether the internet is a net energy saver or net energy cost. I also don't exactly agree with the main gist of the original article.

The reason I posted was because I *did* think it was an interesting tidbit to point out that running the internet does cost energy. And actually rather a lot. As we move through the energy bottleneck of the 21st century, it will require conscious choices about what infrastructure we maintain, and at what cost.

I see the benefit of the internet in terms of ecology. It is the foundation of an entire new category of ecological niches, both for businesses and in terms of human dialog and information passing. Kind of analogous to how the evolution of flowering plants and seeds enabled new kinds of ecological niches for animals. Higher density energy sources became available, and that created new kinds of possible lifestyles, which could eventually be filled by speciation.

The internet is like that. It makes new kinds of businesses, and subcultures, and lifestyles possible. It increases diversity. The last 12 years of my career depended utterly on the existence of the internet. I've developed software, and managed interns, written and submitted proposals, etc, all over the tubes, from my home.

I guess the other part of the original article I thought was good was pointing out that we've migrated an incredible amount of our knowledge, commerce, financial records, etc, onto the internet, in an incredibly short time. If we *did* allow it to disintegrate, a lot of it would just be lost.

Including the LOL-cats.

http://www.amazon.com/Can-Has-Cheezburger-LOLcat-Colleckshun/dp/159240409X

I'm hoping that after we've wiped out most life on Earth, including ourselves and cats, a copy will be found by some alien archaeologists. It'll confuse the fuck the out of them.

:rofl:

It's one of the state's real backwaters. If you lived there and wanted to go buy clothes, Sacramento would probably be the closest place with a real clothing store. It would be a three hour round trip.

Driving out there I passed about 4 vehicles going in the other direction, and two of them were package delivery trucks.

I bet the internet has really changed shopping patterns in rural areas.