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![“Often people think of [data centers] as almost like cathedrals of servers. Very clean computer equipment, white walls and things—the reality is, these are factories,” states Tate Cantrell, CTO of the data-center company Verne Global, in this article by Ingrid Burrington. Credit: Wikipedia](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/1d/1d54j3zthigxg3yq.jpeg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=514 "“Often people think of [data centers] as almost like cathedrals of servers. Very clean computer equipment, white walls and things—the reality is, these are factories,” states Tate Cantrell, CTO of the data-center company Verne Global, in this article by Ingrid Burrington. Credit: Wikipedia")
The impact of data centers—really, of computation in general—isn’t something that really galvanizes the public, partly because that impact typically happens at a remove from everyday life. The average amount of power to charge a phone or a laptop is negligible, but the amount of power required to stream a video or use an app on either device invokes services from data centers distributed across the globe, each of which uses energy to perform various processes [...] — the Atlantic
"Still, it seems weird that most people—most engineers building the platforms people use every day, even—lack the basic comprehension that different online activities have different energy impacts, or that an individual’s online activities have energy impact at all beyond a laptop’s... View full entry
