Future Now
The IFTF Blog
How much does cyberspace weigh?
Following up on my end of cyberspace article: Russell Seitz offers a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the weight of cyberspace:
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.