The offline cost of an online world

good article.
Interesting topic that many people don't think about.

where is all this energy going that we use to feed our online addictions?

i'm not interested in going to rehab, i say no no no!

wow! I'm always very careful about my energy uses but I never thought about how my internet usage does damage as well. I love the internet and now I will try to cut back on wasting energy on the internet by using blackle. It's cool... it's all black.

Interesting,
I hardly imagined about energy consumption of servers beyond cables...

However, what this does not take into consideration is the amount of energy and fossil fuel use we save by not going out and to driving places etc. - take internet conferences for example.

With me?

Maybe we should all be like Jainists and refuse to eat, sleep, move, or walk lest we harm the earth.

Maybe we should!

But maybe that would be a bit extreme?

:P

we would all do well to curb our addictions.

arguably, addiction is the only thing that keeps us from better adapting to our set of circumstances.

I have a labtop and its almost always on the dim setting. Just to see how everything we do impacts the earth is amazing.

Sounds like a promotional stunt to me, a pretty convincing one though, won't hurt to try out ''Blackle'' for a while though.

I have no idea how no one is not catching these types of news here. To say that "The internet is helping to destroy the World," it seems to me a little bit exaggerated form of opinion and therefore more towards the human environmental and mental myopia. It is like saying we are breathing too much oxygen, let's cut it or we are having too much information and education, let's cut it. Now, don't go out there thinking I am saying here that we should not be more aware about energy conservation when using our household appliances and computers.

What I mean is that, ...Oh, well you will probably get the real point about distracting people to and from the real core causes of the Global Warming issue.

How about we kick off saving the earth with alternatives to oil? Seems logical to me....

just because many of us are forced to use electricity produced by nuclear & coal plants right now there is no reason to say that using computers is destroying the planet...if anything its all of the toxic ish used in the production of computers & other electronic products that's the real problem.

apple puts out a new ipod every 6 months that all u hipsters run out 2 buy & just throw away your old ones.

laptops & internet servers could very easily be powered by solar energy we just gotta keep fighting for energy independence!

There aren't enough raw materials to seriously ramp up solar energy production. Besides, solar energy relies on oil powered dump trucks to dig up the rare earth elements required to make a solar panel.

I'd be very interested to know how much of an impact social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace have...and for that matter, Current. Is it possible to calculate this yet?

I guess people should thing twice before going on myspace all day.

same here

This is sure an ironic place for this discussion. Time to log off...

Actually computers in general are not terribly earth friendly but who is really ready to stop buying them? Probably the best thing we can do is hold on to our computers longer instead of buying the latest, greatest technology ever time it comes out. If it works, why replace it?

jordan, looks like you are getting into a statistical quest of analysis. If you have the drive go for it. Quantitative Analysis has always been the quest of Marketing. Not sure however what this has to do with this topic but if you want to log the viewers on Current that is just a math piece of cake. Humm, better get in contact with the CTO's Server Admin's and Programmers. They can tell you how to do analyze that without a problem since they have been doing this for years.

Dbocaz, you are right on the subject and I could not agree more with you! However in our reality, this issue many times is related to the expansion of production and technology. For us Designers, Movie Makers, and Producers this is essentially related to our "Tool of Work" and it is just logical for us to have the fastest and best tool to do the job professionally right. However the general public should hang in there until new things have been tested and the bugs worked out first before jumping in the river of consumerism.

I think i found out about Blackle through current but its definately harder to see than google, didnt think it would make that much of a difference when using it.
Man...From now on going online is gonna give me the same guilty feeling of driving my car, I hate being Catholic.

B3rt, you made me laugh with your Catholic guilt comment, but seriously... I found myself not taking this article very seriously. Of course we want to increase the efficiency of everything that consumes energy, so?

I don't know what to say. I spend most of my waking, and quite possibly some of my sleeping, life online. I think anything that can be done to make a difference should be, I'm down with using Blackle, plus black pixels allegedly give your monitor a longer life.

So Blackle cuts the amount of energy you use whilst surfing the net as well giving your monitor a little bit of extra life. Cool.

I gotta say, it seems to me that almost everything we do as a part of our daily lives has an effect on the environment, and I don't really think we're gonna be able to start living more eco-friendily until our energy comes from eco-friendly sources.

Hey, every action has an equal and opposite reaction in this universe of ours. We just need weigh our choices more prudently so as not to wipe out essential life sustaining mechanisms.

There is a difference between using the internet and just messing around. The next time you're messing around at your cubicle, think about that!

New Southpark... Those guys continue to be one step ahead of the news...

"We just need weigh our choices more prudently so as not to wipe out essential life sustaining mechanisms."

Yeah, right, like polio, malaria, HIV, smallpox, all those lovely little "essential life sustaining mechanisms". Hook people up via the internet and maybe we might find better and cleverer solutions for our 'oikos' (Greek for house, the source word of 'eco-'). But then again, lots of environmental hand wringers don't really care about the people living in the house, do they, especially if they're poor, brown and far away...

BenDorries, I see that coming too!! I feel like such a monster, i'm sure writing this comment just wiped out 2 species and 5 people

I can't imagine website developers taking measures to prevent energy wastage, just like I can't imagine people replacing their trash cans with recycling bins

I wondered about that, well now another solution for another problem.

promotional stunt....