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Yes...we have these huge installations called Datacenters, that consume 1% of the global electricity and are behind all these internet services people like to b
by illusivefeline 4y ago
Yes...we have these huge installations called Datacenters, that consume 1% of the global electricity and are behind all these internet services people like to boast so much about. Even this website is being hosted in a huge datacenter somewhere. Not on a distributed p2p network, even though those technologies have been around for a long time.
Pretty much everything serious people do online is offloaded to one of these places. You probably don't store your emails or messages on your PC. You store them on the cloud. You also likely don't maintain a movie collection anymore, you use Netflix or Youtube.
Your digital devices are mostly useless without an internet connection and strongly depends on an ecosystem of centralized data services stored and processed in datacenters. An old estimate put the energy consumption of an Iphone as comparable to a fridge once you took the data services into perspective. [1]
Even the actual connectivity infrastructure behind the internet is very centralized. We have a handful of optical fiber cables at the bottom of the seven seas connecting large routing centers that makes the internet tick.
[1] https://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/ https://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-...
- enslavedrobot 4y agoIn the early 80s almost all global computing power was centralized in mainframes. Manufacturers used $/compute power as a core metric to guide their thinking around future product development. They were perplexed when people started buying PCs because they were 10x more expensive on a compute power basis, but they eliminated the friction associated with centralized systems (terminals, queues, the need to be connected, etc.). The value of a PC was invisible to them. Centralized generation of electricity has the same problem, the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity is so high that there is an inevitable crossover point where the cost of localized electricity generation and storage will decline below the cost of grid maintenance. At that point we will live in a new world of distributed power generation with deep implications for society. Can't wait.
- illusivefeline 4y agoAlthough I have no idea about how computing power is concentrated these days. The reliance on central systems is very much the case, or I would say even worse. Because we know have arguably vital services running online and depending on these datacenters. Most people use their computers as terminals, that need to be connected to large datacenters, through the internet so they can do the things they want, from watching cat videos, to listening to their favorite songs to shopping or writing office documents on online productivity webapps. Also renewable energy projections don't really support that view at all. Renewable energy costs are plateauing, as with Li-ion batteries (2022 was the first year that the average cost of batteries haven't dropped since the BNEF started their analysis in 2013). And with the need for more energy storage, more transmission capacity, long term storage, flexible demand systems. The grid is going to be more needed than ever.
- enslavedrobot 4y agoI don't think there is much point is continuing this discussion, though, as a PhD materials chemist with an MBA, I could literally write dissertations on the future costs of solar and storage. Instead, I'll leave you with two YouTube videos that outline the future of distributed energy and the fate of centralized generation. https://youtu.be/6zgwiQ6BoLA https://youtu.be/6zgwiQ6BoLA https://youtu.be/udJJ7n_Ryjg https://youtu.be/udJJ7n_Ryjg Peace