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The Real Costs of Big Data: Every video we stream, AI query we make, and all of the cloud backup that our economy is increasingly dependent upon, relies on the construction of massive data centers. While these facilities can help drive economic growth, bring tax revenue, and enable our daily digital tools, they also consume immense amounts of electricity and water, straining local grids and ecosystems. Communities around these data centers face rising utility costs, noise pollution from cooling fans and depleted water sources while gaining very few permanent, long-term jobs once construction ends. How do we ethically balance these heavy, hyper-local environmental and social burdens against the global financial and societal benefits of the digital economy?
https://cityjournal.substack.com/p/data-centers-in-space-its-complicated