Here’s a fact: the data center buildout is going to re-industrialize America. The sooner we embrace this reality; the sooner we reap the rewards.
by Shaun Kenney
Data centers have arrived and it’s about time they did — and it’s your fault, too.
Well, not entirely your fault — but if you’re watching Netflix and Amazon Prime, using AI tools to generate images or research or God forbid grade term papers, you’re in on the joke.
…and they are everywhere.
Of course, organizations such as the Piedmont Environmental Council naturally takes their place in the constellation of groups that have questions, though it is difficult to tell if they oppose data centers per se or whether they oppose the present means by which data centers are changing the economy.
One thing seems to be in agreement — the internet of things is here to stay, the energy problem isn’t as difficult to resolve as one might think, and the use of cool tech to cool the data centers is already here — even if the ubiquity of small modular reactors (SMRs) are at best a decade away.
Yet even if we wanted to go back to newspapers and the Res Publica Litterarum — and I certainly would be in line to do so — the fact of the matter is that artificial intelligence is going to be as serious a jump in technology as the automobile, the early internet, air conditioning, the steam engine, rural electrification, cell phone towers, public sanitation, and movable type.
It’s happening — the match will not be postponed.
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