RE: Odd math?

I threw the bank account and stock portfolio idea out there merely as another example of stored data being attributed to a single name. I have no idea what the actual power usage per capita would really be in those cases, although it certainly would be counted in the overall usage numbers as you stated, which leads to only a small percentage of “double dipping” when looking at a single energy use example.

When you try to attribute the power used by each avatar by the method used in the article, it does really present a skewed way of looking at things, because we’re really not comparing apples to apples here. There are really two somewhat separate worlds; the one the avatars “live” in with their limited population inside a subset of ours. Can anyone really believe that if they were to sign on to Second Life anew today, that suddenly an extra 1752kWh would be drawn? At the same time though, the total power of the servers is being drawn from the grid when all is added up. If 10,000 more people were to sign up, then they would have to buy more servers and use more total energy.

Applying “ownership” of energy usage to an avatar which exists merely as stored data is really somewhat silly when you start to think about it. I think that the only real ecological point that can made from this article is in it being a metaphor for the fact that as we become more technological in all aspects of our life, we are going to use more and more energy as a society. By presenting it as “My avatar uses more power than an entire village in Bangladesh”, just adds an imagination capturing slant to the story.