And as far as the jobs they bring to communities. Well, I there is some bad news There too. Once construction is finished, they employ very few people, especially for such resource-intensive facilities.
These are all logical reasons to oppose data centers. But I suspect there’s an additional, emotional one, too. And this is an echo of what we have heard before.
More than a decade ago, Silicon Valley’s big tech companies began operating buses to shuttle workers to their campuses from San Francisco and other Bay Area cities. Like data centers, these buses used shared resources like public roads and, people felt, paid their fair share. protests started. But while the protests were certainly about the use of shared resources, they were also about something bigger.
Tech companies big and small were changing San Francisco. The early 2010s were a time of rapid gentrification in the city. And what’s more, the tech industry was changing society itself. Smartphones were the new ubiquitous. The way we interacted with the world was fundamentally changing, and people, for the most part, were unable to do anything about it. You couldn’t stop Google.
But you can stop the Google Bus.
You can stand in front of it and block its path. You can yell at people climbing on it. You can yell at your elected officials and tell them to do something. And in San Francisco, people did. Buses were eventually regulated.
The data center pushback has a similar vibe. We are told that AI is changing society. It’s suddenly everywhere. Even if you choose not to use ChatGPIT or Cloud or Gemini, generative AI is increasingly built into every app and service you use. People are worried that AI will create jobs in the coming years. Or kill us all. and for what? So far, returns certainly haven’t lived up to the hype.
You can’t stop Google. But maybe, just maybe, you can stop the Google data center.
Then again, maybe not. Technobuses, although regulated, are still common in San Francisco. And the city is more civilized than ever before. Meanwhile, in Monroe County, life goes on. In October, Google Confirmed that he has purchased 950 acres of land Just off the interstate. It plans to build a data center there.
