You are right. Most people are against scale and progress. I don’t think it’s about big tech. I don’t think it’s about data centers. I don’t think it’s about emissions or water. It’s about scale.
The scale of wealth imbalance, the scale of money in politics, the scale of grocer prices,
the scale of data collection and abuse of targeted price manipulation,
the scale of climate catastrophe,
the scale of electric bills, humming noises, draught conditions.
It’s about realizing the scales are uneven, and seeing a tangible incarnation of that being built. All those problems are starting to seem awfully close to home.
You can’t reach the trillionaire, but maybe you can keep it out of your back yard, so you protest the data center.
People are against progress when they don't see a clear benefit to themselves. Medical progress, for example, is often widely embraced.
The thing about data centers is that some are being built in this gold rush manner and people can't see the through line to how they will benefit from them. Data center infrastructure companies are making deals with town councils in rural areas that include restrictive NDA's so the voters can't inspect what the deal involves. Combine this with AI fatigue where every time you use a website or app and some new AI feature is being pushed on you and a lot of people just feel like completely overwhelmed by the situation.
If the data center companies were smart, they would be open and cooperative with the communities they are trying to build in. But they are impatient and think they can just throw more money at the problem and shove it down the community's throat.
Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.
None of those things are inherently true. I know it’s happening with a few DCs in the US operated by scrupulous people, but it’s far from the normal.
Datacenters don’t need to use much water outside of normal office needs. They don’t need to increase energy costs. They don’t need to pollute or make any noise in normal conditions.
If they do any of those things in normal operations, it’s due to lacking regulations or the lack of enforcement of existing regulations.
Who gives a shit about the average SV sociopath's idea of "progress"? In this context, progress means mass surveillance, infinite AI slop flooding every single facet of our lives and replacing any human job that isn't some sort of C-suite, why on earth would people be championing this type of "progress"?
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I'm not a fan of any large projects from Amazon, including data centers, warehouses, and the HQ2 office.
Okay. But there isn’t anywhere near the sort of backlash against those other things as there is against AI data centers.
AI data centers are much larger, much more visible, much more power hungry, consume more water and noisier.
Its just not the same thing.
You are right. Most people are against scale and progress. I don’t think it’s about big tech. I don’t think it’s about data centers. I don’t think it’s about emissions or water. It’s about scale.
The scale of wealth imbalance, the scale of money in politics, the scale of grocer prices, the scale of data collection and abuse of targeted price manipulation, the scale of climate catastrophe, the scale of electric bills, humming noises, draught conditions. It’s about realizing the scales are uneven, and seeing a tangible incarnation of that being built. All those problems are starting to seem awfully close to home. You can’t reach the trillionaire, but maybe you can keep it out of your back yard, so you protest the data center.
People are against progress when they don't see a clear benefit to themselves. Medical progress, for example, is often widely embraced.
The thing about data centers is that some are being built in this gold rush manner and people can't see the through line to how they will benefit from them. Data center infrastructure companies are making deals with town councils in rural areas that include restrictive NDA's so the voters can't inspect what the deal involves. Combine this with AI fatigue where every time you use a website or app and some new AI feature is being pushed on you and a lot of people just feel like completely overwhelmed by the situation.
If the data center companies were smart, they would be open and cooperative with the communities they are trying to build in. But they are impatient and think they can just throw more money at the problem and shove it down the community's throat.
That's a weird way to reason about it.
Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.
None of those things are inherently true. I know it’s happening with a few DCs in the US operated by scrupulous people, but it’s far from the normal.
Datacenters don’t need to use much water outside of normal office needs. They don’t need to increase energy costs. They don’t need to pollute or make any noise in normal conditions.
If they do any of those things in normal operations, it’s due to lacking regulations or the lack of enforcement of existing regulations.
Do you think people would still oppose it if hypothetically data centres didn't use that much water? hint: this is not a hypothetical
It's not only about the water, so there is no need to fixate on it.
They are not against "progress" in a vacuum.
Who gives a shit about the average SV sociopath's idea of "progress"? In this context, progress means mass surveillance, infinite AI slop flooding every single facet of our lives and replacing any human job that isn't some sort of C-suite, why on earth would people be championing this type of "progress"?