In “Thinking Outside the Black Box,” Michael Brand begins from the seemingly innocuous image of a data processing center to think about the hidden social and environmental costs of these warehouse-sized, electricity-guzzling behemoths that keep the internet as we know it up and running. The essay, a runner-up in Art of Writing’s Spring 2024 contest, was written for Professor Michael Nylan’s “Art of Writing Climate Change” seminar.
Pictured above is the inside of a data center. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what is much more pertinent here are the pieces that aren’t pictured. While you can see the server racks (commonly referred to as black boxes), you can’t see the larger system of digital infrastructure they are connected to, responsible for making the internet function. While you can see the systems light up to process our data, it is much harder to visualize the electricity and water those systems depend on. While you can see the mysteriously dark interior of the data center, what you don’t see are the local communities protesting on the outside.
This picture may be easy to describe—a row of black boxes inside of a data center—but there is a much larger story here—one that can’t be told in a single picture. It also can’t be told in a single short piece of writing. Thus, instead of trying to tell the full story, I will focus on three parts of it: the internet, the environment, and communities.
This story starts with why data centers are being built in the first place. In brief, they are an essential part of the infrastructure that provides us with the cloud. Every time we do a Google search, text a friend, or send an email, our data stream gets processed by a data center. Over time the internet has turned into a network of networks, growing exponentially. This has simultaneously caused a similar growth in the data center industry.
Recently, the growth of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) has caused an even larger need for data center capacity. This has led to old data centers getting upgraded into hyperscale data centers, capable of processing much more data. However, as the data center industry continues to grow, there have been several challenges.
Builders of data centers are trying to figure out where to get all the power they need to run their larger data centers. As the systems process more data, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep them from overheating without draining so much groundwater from the area that the center itself and the surrounding buildings all become structurally unstable. Geopolitical challenges are causing supply chain problems, making it harder to source the materials necessary to build a data center. These challenges affect not only the data center industry, but also our environment.
Speaking of the environment….Currently, data centers are responsible for using over 4% of the power in the United States, and that number will only increase as LLMs and AI become more prominent. As the data center industry increases its power demand, there is an ongoing question around where this power comes from. The industry is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and while companies have said that sustainability is important and that renewable energy sources will be an essential part of their future, there aren’t any clear or detailed plans regarding a transition to clean energy.
Additionally, the industry is scrambling to integrate systems capable of keeping up with LLMs and AI. These new systems are in constant need of cooling, a process heavily reliant on water. On average, a large-scale data center uses 3 million gallons of water per day, which is roughly equal to the water usage of 10,000 households (Barrowclough). Beyond the resources data centers require to operate, the facilities produce loud noises reaching up to 92 decibels (equivalent to the sound level of a lawnmower), risking negative impacts to biodiversity (Tozzi). While the issues aren’t pictured in the black box, communities have become increasingly aware of them.
As these data centers have become roughly as big as Walmart warehouses and more energy-intensive than most pieces of critical infrastructure, communities have begun objecting to them. For example, Virginia has become one of the largest data center hotspots in the United States. In late 2023, communities began objecting to the building of new data centers as they risked ruining the natural landscape — destroying oaks, maples, and hickories, as well as the habitats that are home to the beavers, bobcats, and red foxes — and flooding the peace of their valleys and towns with a constant hum. While state legislators have considered regulating the industry, no laws have been passed yet. These data centers aren’t pretty to look at, and companies aren’t incentivized to reduce the large amount of noise they produce. At the same time, without these centers we wouldn’t have the internet.
This story is much more complex than just a black box inside of a data center. The story is bigger than just the systems that provide us with the internet, the environmental costs of them, and the communities they serve and affect.
It’s a story that can’t be captured by a single picture, or ten, or a hundred. To truly understand this story requires being able to see the pictures as part of an interconnected album. Addressing any one of these issues—whether that be increasing capacity, reducing environmental costs, or working with communities—requires a deep understanding of all of the other issues. Coming up with solutions to any of these problems requires, as it were, an “outside the black box” style of thinking, using not just a technological, environmental, or political lens, but rather a combination of all three.
Works Cited
Barrowclough, Nicholas. “Transforming Data Centre Cooling for a Sustainable Future.” Data Centre Magazine, BizClik Media Ltd., 16 Nov. 2023, datacentremagazine.com/articles/transforming-data-centre-cooling-for-a-sustainable-future.
Tozzi, Christopher. “Why Data Centers Are Loud, and How to Quiet Them Down.” Data Center Knowledge | News and Analysis for the Data Center Industry, 2 June 2023, www.datacenterknowledge.com/sustainability/why-data-centers-are-loud-and-how-quiet-them-down.