Data Centers Bad

I have definitive views on data centers, which is more than I can say about a lot of things - including AI itself. (This AI wave is a half truth, with every possible bit of crap that can be crammed into a half truth, being aggressively driven into our brains.)

Getting down to brass tacks, data centers are about consolidation and control at every level - in terms of technological innovation, controlling technological access, control of information, consumer choice, freedom of the press, privacy, the environment, employment, extraction of wealth, political power, you name it. Less people involved in more stuff - massively more stuff - as much stuff as can possibly be absorbed into the most massive monopoly that can be achieved in history.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. These are not the red flags. These are the bad things. What else needs to be said?

It is not a centrist question of when to brake up monopoly, but an aggressive push into the greatest abuse of the issue, which I guess describes the whole of tech and media generally. And the same goes for the past existence of data centers. Look, they were a massively disappointing scourge even fifteen years ago, when people already helplessly gave way to them right past their transparent controversy. 

I suppose now, the already stifled and intentionally muddied ethical conversation about this plethora of centrally relevant values as they specifically and aptly pertain to the definition of government's core relationship to its citizens has been degraded into the mere gripes of hoity toity, out-of-touch neighborhood associations. And secondly, let's make sure we're gracious enough to give voice to the video gamers as well . . . Issues that are just representative enough to look like they aren't slight of hand to reduce the whole thing down to how petty the people are. "I'm on the fence . . . I'm just a silly insignificant person thinking about classy living conditions and video game nostalgia getting in the way of the progress of humanity." . . . Barf.

You do not want one in your community? . . . You do not want them period, and you do not want them to be multiple times bigger than they have ever been, and owned by less people than have ever owned them, in the context of the most unstable political climate we have seen . . . Maybe data centers and AI will actually solve fascism and the revenge of the jocks even though they're the ones pushing it all with that great car salesman's aesthetic that everybody loves so

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

If you must have them, brake them up in terms of monopoly. Very bad. Literally brake them up per single data center.

How much dumb can you do under the banner of AI? How many jobs can you reduce? Will it be the data centers alone that do it? Anything you can under the banner of the half truth of AI?

This is not "first principles". This is the brandishing of a brutality marked by an imposing freight train of lack of imagination and oppressive singularity barreling down on everyone. Let's have a podcast and some tea and cookies.