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How much does cyberspace weigh?

Russell Seitz offers a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

A statistically rough (one sigma) estimate might be 75-100 million servers @ ~350-550 watts each. Call it Forty Billion Watts or ~ 40 GW. Since silicon logic runs at three volts or so, and an Ampere is some ten to the eighteenth electrons a second, a straight forward calculation reveals that if theaverage chip runs at a Gigaherz, some 50 grams of electrons in motion make up the Internet. As of today, cyberspace weighs less than two ounces.

Two ounces. Six of them could fit in the Diet Coke can sitting on my desk. Okay, not really, but still.

Via Bob McHenry

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21 November 2006 at 12:00 in Web/Tech |

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» If it has a shape, you can map it. from J. LeRoy's Evolving Web
I've created several posts over the last six months about ways we might map conversation, thought, and information. I have been focusing on the use of information. How we use it to tell a story. Alex Pang, in the meantime, [Read More]

Tracked on 19 December 2006 at 11:44

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What is the End of Cyberspace?

  • About the end of cyberspace

    Cyberspace is a "metaphor we live by," born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive-- as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds-- cyberspace will disappear.

  • About this blog

    This blog is about what happens next. It's about the end of cyberspace, but more important, about what new possibilities will emerge as new technologies, interfaces, use practices, games, legal theory, regulation, and culture adjust-- and eventually dissolve-- the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds.

  • About the author

    Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is an historian of science and futurist.

    ping Pang

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