Data Centers
I am creating demand for data centers with this post. You’re doing so in reading it. Every activity online creates demand for data centers. This has been the case since the beginning of the Internet. Until now, data centers have been limited in size and often geographically unnoticeable. Suddenly, however, they are drawing attention from citizens. The overwhelming consensus is that people do not want data centers built near them (NIMBY - “Not In My Back Yard”) or at all (BANANA - “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything/Anyone”). While I agree with the concerns, I cannot help but wonder if people are aware that their smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and virtually every other thing that is connected to the Internet is supporting the demand for these data centers.
To be clear, I think some people are just absolutely unaware. However, there are others who would argue that “companies” are responsible for these data centers. I have to ask a follow-up question: where do “companies” get their money? (Customers, of course - anyone who uses their services, consciously or otherwise). Others, still, minimize their lifestyle’s contribution to the problem they are demanding be halted.
I’m not writing this post as a “gotcha.” I do not think people are being hypocritical in their valid concerns about data centers. However, I think what is lost in the conversation is how much people are willing to do without for the sake of minimizing the prevalence of these data centers. If you’re against one being built near you but still utilizing them - even unwittingly - you’re kinda saying you want them “someplace else” and that they’re “someone else’s problem.”
That brings me to why I am writing this blog post. Recently, I decided to significantly reduce my activity online as to minimize my use of the data centers that we’re all so concerned about. I stopped paying $30 for YouTube Premium and deleted it from my iPad - which up until recently was used to binge on content in bed before falling asleep each day. I deleted my Facebook account. I stopped using ChatGPT and Google, replacing both with Ecosia (not a perfect solution, but one that at least claims to offset some of the impact through tree-planting). Life is getting much more analog these days, which has resulted in me remembering what life was like before about 2008, when I adopted much of my online modus operandi. An online blog on a personal website remains, because it is minimal in terms of data requirements and also because I think it will probably be a better way to communicate, anyway. The wholeness of my thoughts can be written and shared, and hopefully only the most thoughtful will read and fully comprehend what I am attempting to communicate here. The short-form posting of social media has resulted in a lot of misunderstanding of who I actually am over the years, and I would prefer to not participate in that level of misconception and miscommunication.
On a deeper level, I wish society were willing to have a conversation about how much information technology and communication technology we are truly willing to put up with - both in terms of data centers to support those technologies and in terms of the social and cultural connections that are going to be and have been lost in their adoption. Instead, I think we will very much treat data centers much the way we treat municipal solid waste: landfill it somewhere else, but don’t expect a reduction in waste generated. After all, that’s the fault of “companies!”