In both small towns and large metropolises, there will always be a need to store data. Many products which rely on “the cloud” need massive data centers to process and store the information needed to run the products.
However, “the cloud” has a much greater physical and environmental impact than most think. Despite claiming to be more environmentally friendly by eliminating the use of paper, cloud computing causes more environmental harm than prior methods of data collection and storage. Further, of the energy required for these massive data centers, as much as 94% serves no purpose. The acres upon acres of computers generally see no more than 10% utilization of their total uptime. Though companies which provide cloud services say that all of this is in the name of reliability, there is software which can manage server usage to be more efficient. Large companies would rather continue wasting massive amounts of energy rather than risk even milliseconds of downtime.
Beyond the technical requirements for running these data centers, they often have invaded vulnerable, small communities, where a single large datacenter can consume more than the entire residential energy usage. Because of this inordinate amount of power consumption, utility companies are often happy to have such reliable energy consumers to reduce ebbs and flows in the power they need to produce. Companies routinely bully small communities to exist outside the law. This investigation focuses on the impacts of these computing farms on the physical, social, ecological, and legal environments of the communities they reside in.
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