confused and lost.

first things first, i want to know what is an avatar and what they mean by it.  As i was reading the article of Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians by nick at December 5, 2006 07:58 AM, i was confused of what they were talking about  . They were talking about people like they were computer s and how much  energy we spend.. i dont know if the music i was blasting that bryan put up on face book was distracting me.
i hope in class we could discuss this article.