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A Second Life avatar produces 1,685 pounds of CO2? And an acre of real estate in Second Life produces 99 tons of CO2? What gives?

One of my pet research projects has been to find ways to establish effective, playful bridges between 1st life and 2nd life. What is 1st Life and what is 2nd Life? By 2nd life, I’m not referring to the virtual world run by Linden Labs. For me, “2nd life” is an evocative metaphor that counterpoints the normal, human, physical, material world, which I refer to as 1st life. I’ll grant that the language lacks precision, but I’m relying a bit on my own assumptions, which I think are fairly well-shared, as to what counts as a digital, networked, social environment. 1st life is then the non-networked, non-digital social environment.

The presentation — titled When 1st Life Meets 2nd Life I gave this week at Lift07 started with a reminder as to the material basis of 2nd life. There is “stuff” that undergirds digital networks — indeed every digital bit owes its life to some sort of material. Atoms compose digital data. There’s that stuff that we’re never really aware of unless we spend time working in the data center facilities where all of the Internets take physical form. 2nd life and its digital networks are made of heavy material — copper cable, steel racks to hold servers, rubber or plastic insulated power cabling, cooling systems, human labor, billions and billions of integrated circuits and the effluvia of the toxic chemicals expelled during their production, shipping and decomposition, etc. Our participation in this materiality probably ends at about the time when we discard the cardboard box and styrofoam packing of the shipping material in which our new computers arrive.

But this is more than the William Mitchell bits & atoms thesis. It’s not just the equivalence, but the precise nature of that material — what kind of stuff are we talking about? It’s not just the composition of digital bits, but what physical material, in the use of digital bits, of digital networks, of our PC’s, web and game servers, is produced.

Perhaps the most unsettling material characteristic of our 2nd lives is considering the resources necessary to maintain them. Whether emailing, googling, blogging, uploading videos, downloading music — everything — this owes a measurable and material debt to first life. When one computes the amount of power — normal 1st life electricity — that is consumed to maintain our 2nd lives it becomes clear what that debt is. Or when one computes how many tons of CO2 emissions result from the production of that electricity, assuming the majority of our power comes from plants that burn something that produces CO2 as a consequence of producing electricity.

I started running these numbers after reading a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion on Nicholas Carr’s blog where he computed these figures based on some public figures he found pertaining to Linden Lab’s Second Life environment. One could run the same numbers for any other digitally networked activity, like emailing or web surfing or whatever.

What’s particularly appealing about choosing an online world like Second Life as my example is that it’s underlying metaphor is 1st life. Email would be another good example, as postal mail requires energy that exhausts CO2 in its processing and delivery. But Second Life has more PR these days, so I’ll use that as an example.

Second Life itself captures many of the important characteristics of 1st life and uses that to convey a sense of familiarity for the users. There is property in Second Life, waterways, buildings, etc. It’s a 3D virtual world that is largely modeled on commonly held assumptions about what counts as 1st life. What it doesn’t convey to its users is any kind of Second Life representation of the ecological cost of that Second Life world, which would be very cool — Second Life CO2 emissions, for instance, to correspond to equivalent estimates about how much CO2 is emitted in 1st life.

I was shocked at the numbers on Carr’s blog, so I computed them myself to check the math. I revised some of his assumptions, so my figures are significantly more conservative than his. (I’d even go so far as to say that my figures are unrealistically low, because a more rigorous analysis would include estimates about the power consumption of the ancillary network devices between the user’s computer and the data center.) I also culled from comments in Carr’s blog post to refine some of the assumptions, especially the remarks from Second Life employees who have direct access to some of the power consumption figures.

There are a few additional assumptions I’ve made, mostly pertaining to what I think is a more realistic assumption as to how much power a typical home PC uses, and how often one might actually play Second Life.

Carr assumes that a home PC consumes 120 watts, which I think is much too low — I assume 300 watts, based on looking at the technical specifications of a mid-range Dell computer, and I also compute the power consumption of an LCD display. I also don’t assume, as Carr does, that someone playing Second Life is playing 24 hours a day — I assume, averaged over a year, they will play eight hours per day. Some days they won’t play, others they may invest 12 hours. I think 8 hours is a fair assumption.

I’ve also used the assumption that 1.35 pounds of CO2 is emitted per kWH of electricity produced.

A Linden Labs employee measured the power consumption of their servers and came up with the figure of 175 watts (energy per hour) with the server running at full-tilt. I assume that the servers basically run at full-tilt 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that servers of this sort make demands on the data center for cooling, power distribution, ancillary resources like lighting, operations center energy costs, keeping the candy and pop machine running in the break room, etc., at an equivalent of 50% of their nominal energy use. So, a 175 watt server actually needs 175+87.5 watts of energy to function in a data center.

I came up with the following figures:

Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Second Life Servers): 153 kWH
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Home User’s PC): 1,095 kWH
Total Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year: 1,248 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Second Life Servers): 207 lbs (94 kilos)
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Home User’s PC): 1,478 lbs (670 kilos)
Total CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685 lbs (764 kilos)

Second Life is composed of regions that have a correspondence to normal 1st life acres. I’ve learned that there are 16 acres per region, and there are 4 regions per server, so there are a total of 64 Second Life acres per server. That means the power consumption per Second Life acre is 16.8 kWH, or 147,168 kWH per Second Life acre per 1st life year. And that means that 23 pounds of CO2 is produced and exhausted into the 1st life atmosphere per Second Life acre per hour, or 198,677 pounds (90,118 kilos) per Second Life acre per year.

Some equivalence for perspective:

In 2003, the per-capita power consumption in the United States: 13,242 kWH
In 2001, the per-capita power consumption in Iceland: 26,947 kWH
In 2001, the per-capita power consumption in Keyna: 118 kWH
(World Resource Institute, EarthTrends — http://earthtrends.wri.org)

Every year, every Avatar in Second Life produces CO2 emissions equivalent to a typical, honking, bloated, arrogant SUV driving 1,293 miles, based on the assumption that this kind of SUV generates 1 lbs of CO2 per mile.

If serving this page took the CPU on my modest web server .1 second to serve to you, it probably consumed .004 watt (assuming my clunker consumes 100 watts + 50 watts for overhead)..it works out to about 6 micrograms of CO2, not counting whatever your PC contributed to the production of CO2. Okay, I’m getting carried away, but you get the idea.

Why do I blog this?I find this kind of analysis fascinating and revealing. It is the kind of bridge between 1st life and 2nd life I am trying to build, where the semantic link between what goes on in our 2nd life worlds is made plain in its correspondence to 1st life. 2nd life activities are not the clean, sustainable, whole-earth friendly activities the Bay Area, Web 2.0 crew may think they are. Despite the important evolution of human social formations that have arisen, the messiness of the 1st life remains. Maybe there should be a little eco-meter on the dashboard of Second Life, World of Warcraft and, whatever — YouTube and my blog. I’d be interested in computing the same figures for World of Warcraft. I suspect they’re probably equivalent, although I’d probably bump up the average hours of play per WoW character quite a bit. I would need to know the distribution of simultaneous characters per server, or number of servers per instance, as well as some sense as to how much power is consumed by whatever server they may use. It’s about provoking some thinking about the material contingencies of our online activities. I won’t really quibble about the numbers. Someone’s going to want me to adjust something this way or that — the accuracy of the figure will be forever elusive, so I’m not interested in debating that, or tweaking some of the numbers. The point is — there is a debt paid for our online lives and we rarely think about it. How can we start to introduce the material aspects of this activity more directly? That is my goal here.

At The Data Center
Server Power Consumption (Energy Per Hour): 175 watts
Percept Power Consumption for Cooling and Ancillary Network Operations Center Needs: 50%
Ancillary Power Consumption Per Server (Energy Per Hour): 87.5 watts
Total Server Instance Power Consumption (Energy Per Hour): 262.5

Active Servers for Second Life: 1,000
Active Avatars in Second Life Per Day: 15,000
Average Active Avatars Per Server in Second Life Per Day: 15
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Hour (Server Only): 262.5/15=17.5
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day (Server Only): 17.5*24=420
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (kilowatt hours): 420*365/1000=153.3
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (lbs): 153.3 (kilowatt hours)*1.35 (CO2 pounds per kilowatt hour)

Acres Per Region: 16
Regions Per Server: 4
Acres Per Server: 64
Power Consumption Per Acre: 64*262.5=16.8 kWH
Power Consumption Per Acre Per Year: 16.8*24*365=147,168 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Acre Per Hour: 1.35 (CO2 pounds per kilowatt hour) * 16.8 kWH = 23 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Acre Per Year: 23*24*365=198,677 lbs (99 short tons)

Average PC Power Consumption: 300 watts
Average PC LCD (17″) Power Consumption: 75 watts

At Home
PC Use (Hours/Day): 8
Power Consumption Per PC Per Day: 3 kWH
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day: 3 kWH (One PC At Home Per Avatar)
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year: 1,095 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Day (Home PC @ 8 hours/day): 1.35 CO2 Pounds Per kWH * 3kWH = 4.05 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Home PC @ 8 hours/day): 4.05 * 365 = 1,478 lbs

Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day (Home + Server): 20.5 lbs
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Home + Server): 1,248.3 lbs

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Day (Home + Server): 27.68 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685 lbs

SUV CO2 Emissions Per Mile: 1 lbs
Equivalent SUV Miles Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685

==============
Parenthetically, I’ve been asked why I pluralize Internet — isn’t there just one? I guess my speculation is that we are heading toward a kind of Balkanization of digital networks, thanks to the deleterious effects of net neutrality. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were tiers of networks, with levels of privilege offered based on one’s ability to pay for better or faster or thicker bandwidth.

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Originally from research/techkwondo - research node of www.techkwondo.com, ReBlogged by yatta on Feb 12, 2007 at 11:18 AM

Originally from unmediated on February 12, 2007, 10:18am

One of the most intriguing recent developments in the display industry has been the discovery and development of polymer light emitting diodes (PLEDs). It all started in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University in 1989, when it was found that ‘organic’ LEDs could be made using conjugated polymers.

In particular, polyphenylene vinylene (PPV) was found to emit yellow-green light when sandwiched between a pair of electrodes. The initial device efficiencies were very low, but the researchers quickly realized the commercial potential of this discovery, especially for the manufacture of displays which emit their own light. These would offer significant advantages over the main display technology used today (liquid crystal display or LCD), in which a separate light source has to be filtered in several stages to produce an image.

PLEDs have a number of intrinsic advantages over liquid crystal devices. PLED is an emissive technology: it emits light as a function of its electrical operation. A PLED display consists of polymer material manufactured on a substrate of glass or plastic, and does not require additional elements such as backlights, filters and polarizers. PLED technology is very energy efficient and lends itself to the creation of ultra-thin lighting displays that will operate at lower voltages. The resulting benefits include brighter, clearer displays with viewing angles approaching 180 degrees; simpler construction resulting in cheaper, more robust display modules, and fast response times allowing full color video pictures even at low temperature. [via Cambridge Display Technology Ltd.]

Originally from Transmaterial on April 10, 2006, 8:41am

Remember Light-Transmitting Concrete? Áron Losonczi, the Hungarian inventor of the fiber-optic embedded blocks, has developed a light fixture called LitraCube which utilizes four interlocking panels of the material.

As promised when the material was first developed, a wall made of “LitraCon” allegedly has the strength of traditional concrete but thanks to an embedded array of glass fibers can display a view of the outside world, such as the silhouette of a tree, for example.

“Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block,” explained its inventor Áron Losonczi. “Shadows on the lighter side will appear with sharp outlines on the darker one. Even the colours remain the same. This special effect creates the general impression that the thickness and weight of a concrete wall will disappear.”

For just 595 Euros for LitraCube, you can claim you have built your own “structure” out of LiTraCon.

Originally from Transmaterial on April 12, 2006, 11:15am

Thanks to research from the University of Southern California and Princeton University, almost any surface in a building, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets or tables.

Scientists studying organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical leap from single-color displays to a highly efficient and long-lived natural light source. The invention, described in the April 13 issue of Nature, is the latest fruit of a 13-year OLED research program led by Mark Thompson, professor of chemistry in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Stephen Forrest, formerly of Princeton University and now vice president for research at the University of Michigan.

“This process will enable us to get 100 percent efficiency out of a single, broad spectrum light source,” Thompson said. If the device can be mass-manufactured cheaply - a realistic expectation, according to Thompson - interior lighting could look vastly different in the future.

Since OLEDs are transparent when turned off, the devices could even be installed as windows or skylights to mimic the feel of natural light after dark - or to serve as the ultimate inconspicuous flat-panel television. [via Smart Economy, April 14, 2006; suggested by Walter Derzko, Toronto.]

Originally from Transmaterial on May 5, 2006, 12:36pm

Textile designer Ane Lykke has developed a three-dimensional wallpaper which explores the visual parallax created by two multicolored layers of hexagonal boxes. Currently on display at the Danish Design Centre, her so-called “Mind the Gap” wall decoration inspires interaction with the observer.

”The exhibition explores a very common phenomenon, which we have all experienced, for example when passing two parallel grid fences. As we move we see new wave forms or patterns arising. This is the principle that I have used in the exhibition. I want to find new ways of affecting the perception of a space, demonstrating that the spectator plays a crucial part,” says Ane Lykke, who adds that in physics this phenomenon is referred to as interference patterns.

Mind the Gap consists of a two-layered wall where the layers are separated by a 14 cm-space. The layers are made of hexagonal plastics boxes with stripes made of red lines in varying density and directions. The two layers turn into large pattern areas that change with the light and the spectator’s movements. As Ane Lykke puts it, the wall is “passively waiting” and is only activated when the spectator moves within the space. Then variations of the patterns follow along as a film, forming a living, vibrating surface. In this way, the spectator alters the wall. [via http://www.dexigner.com/.]

Originally from Transmaterial on May 12, 2006, 9:21am

XsunX has developed very thin translucent coatings and films that create large area monolithic solar cell structures. This semi-transparency makes their so-called Power Glass glazing desirable for placing over glass, plastics, and other see-through structures. Using patented processes, such as reel-to-reel manufacturing techniques and multi-terminal cell structure designs, XsunX is working to commercialize large area cell manufacturing processes for thin film flexible plastics.

XsunX claims that Power Glass may provide as much as a 100% efficiency-to-cost gain over conventional opaque solar cells. This 100% gain in efficiency-to-cost is based on estimates of Power Glass solar cells operating at as much as 50% the efficiency of conventional opaque amorphous solar cells yet costing as little as 25% to produce. [via the XsunX website; suggested by Clayton Whitman, Seattle.]

Originally from Transmaterial on May 18, 2006, 5:10pm

Though still relatively young (we featured them soon after their launch a few months back), Mod Green Pod is making a splash on the sustainable design scene by putting a modern twist on the damask, a baroque classic, and you just might see their work at HauteGREEN coming up in a couple of weeks. In our ongoing series featuring the entries to the sustainable design show, we take a peek at their pioneering printed organic cotton upholstery fabric. They source their plain cotton canvas from a company that is a certified organic cotton fabric producer. The organic certification enforces not just strict rules to prohibit toxic chemicals from entering the process, but it also ensures that fair wages and safe working conditions are provided for everyone involved in the farming and post-harvest production.

(This post continues on the site)

Originally by Collin Dunn from Treehugger on May 9, 2006, 11:47am

The on-line magazine “Display and Design Ideas” has a feature article up that postulates “the coming boom in green retail,” exemplified by this wine section in a Giant Eagle. It’s an excellent overview article, and well worth your while to read in full. One paragraph really jumped out at us. “Membership in the nonprofit industry group USGBC has grown more than 1,000 percent in the past four years, currently including more than 5,500 member companies and organizations. Further, the annual U.S. market in green building products and services has grown to $5.8 billion, representing 34 percent growth from the previous year. During the past four years, more than 229 million sq. ft. of commercial building space, which includes retail builds, has been registered or certified under LEED”. TreeHugger has been on this trend as well. Check out here,an earlier piece,…and here….here…, and here.

Originally by John Laumer from Treehugger on April 27, 2006, 7:30am

With further proof that the future is green, the New York Times reports on the latest innovation in newspaper publishing, and it doesn’t have anything to do with paper. Several publications have started testing versions of electronic paper, using a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink that could do for newspapers what the iPod did for music. A handful of trials are underway: De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, the newspaper trade group IFRA in Germany, and the New York Times here in the States are all testing both hardware and software that could take newspapers off the printing press and directly into your hands. The devices, which will be able to download books, newspapers and podcasts, are expected to intially cost about $400. For publishers confronting declining newspaper circulation in most parts of the world, they offer promise similar to that of blogs and other internet content: reaching more readers, saving on printing and distribution costs, quickening the pace of news and information and ultimately saving some trees. ::New York Times via ::Engadget

Originally by Collin Dunn from Treehugger on April 24, 2006, 10:35am

The second in our series of profiles leading up to HauteGREEN is Galya Rosenfeld, the San-Francisco-based designer who has also brought the world her Cocoa Modular Scarf. Like the scarf her Modular Pillows are made from upholstery fabric scraps that have been reclaimed and made into the modular units. There are no glues, stitching or other attachment method used, instead relying on an interlocking system to keep the pillows together; this makes for easy disassembly and recycling. Once disassembled, the modular units can be re-purposed into something new, and if a single modular unit gets damaged or stained, it can be replaced instead of having to replace the whole product. About the pillows, Rosenfeld has this to say: “Considering our changing needs and the whimsy of our fashion, I wanted to create objects that could be transformed — to create a system that would extend the “design life” of objects. Colors and patterns are altered as desires change. Compositional variation can be introduced as oppose to identical mass produced objects, allowing each piece to be one-of-a-kind.” ::HauteGREEN and ::Galya Rosenfeld

TreeHugger’s HauteGREEN Sneak Peek series

Originally by Collin Dunn from Treehugger on April 20, 2006, 4:08pm

Here’s some pretty slick glass/light technology called LightPoints, one of many architectural materials developed by Schott. Not specifically designed to be interactive but with some cleverly placed sensors and DMX control system for LED switching there’s potential for some very nice interactive architecture indeed.

Website

A pane of transparent glass conducting electricity is equipped with LEDs. Using the PVB (Polyvinyl Butyral Foil) laminate method, a cover glass is then added. The LEDs available in white, blue and green emit light in both directions.

The red and yellow LEDs radiate only in one direction. The power (low voltage DC) is supplied through conductive circuits on top of the glass that are almost completely invisible.

Originally by Ruairi from Interactive Architecture dot Org on February 24, 2006, 8:24am

“Bits and Bobs of BacterioPoetics” from Social Fiction

So while BLDGBLOG continues its fascination with Martian viro-invaders, Social Fiction has been expanding its microbial menagerie: godless ecologies simmering with selfish codes and data silently contesting for survival — fractal, pointillist, and mercilessly lethal.

“Trees and ferns often grow in fractal forms. Bacteria colonies can, too.”

Such as these colonies of Bacillus subtilis

Which is why someone should market them alongside these Gardens-in-a-Bag and the equally portable Flowers-in-a-Can. Certainly our reliably adventurous and near-future spacefaring Dubai sheiks can be convinced to invest in these instant landscapes, perhaps even finance viral hunting expeditions to new Edens, where not only new bird and frog species lay uncatalogued but also prized super-strains of Avian flu and Ebola-HIV hybrids await collection and classification by CDC-licensed landscape architects.

Another from Social Fiction’s unsanitary wunderkammer

And if they happen to run out of test tubes, a body can just as easily be converted into a greenhouse and FedExed off to the manufacturing plant, whence every crevices are swabbed, tissues dissected, and bubbling fluids bottled. Then cultured and espaliered with nutrient agar and antibiotics. And finally shipped off along major air traffic routes to waiting WHO-certified gardeners.

(Or maybe the expedition encounters a malicious band of orchid hunters and transnational ex-CIA miner-loggers. Everyone’s sweaty, no shower in weeks, and the constant high pitched droning of the forest has made all trigger-happy and quite insane. The Hot Zone meets Adaptation meets Aguirre. Maybe BLDGBLOG can be persuaded to film this comedy.)

Rotex fractal growth of colonies of Bacillus subtilis (B 168)

Another example of rotex fractal growth. “The colonies grow by the movement of bacteria droplets, filled with bacteria spinning around a common center. Smaller droplets explore the space left by the larger, leading droplets.”

“Under adverse conditions, B 168 usually grow in compact clusters, because the bacteria are immobile. However, if the colonies are grown for very long periods, they sometimes exhibit a new mode of branching growth.”

Varying branching patterns occur by modulating environmental parameters.

Simply arrange them atop your coffee table. Nothing will bring your guests to chat ironically about post-9/11 bioterrorism faster.

Streptococcus from Social Fiction

(Except where noted, images were lifted here.)

In the Archives:
Gardens-in-a-Bag

Originally from Pruned on February 23, 2006, 4:09pm