May 21, 2007
Military datacentre photograph by Simon Norfolk
The modern world of digital abundance is reliant upon the massive data factories storing, churning and reallocating bits and bytes. We call these datacentres. These are the big unsexy buildings, or the cramped spaces fed by the equally unsexy systems of air conditioning and power. As time goes on the power demands and heat leakage of bigger and more capable systems increase, the support equipment increases in sympathy, while the physical spaces get smaller and smaller. The engineering that goes around a modern datacentre is highly specialised, highly technological and an art unto itself.
I was at a driving range today swinging golf clubs with a mate of mine who is an engineer in the industry. He was telling me how he was at a Datacentre Conference when a fellow from the EPA [US Environmental Protection Agency] made a presentation. He said there was two things that made his ears prick up. One, the EPA fellow said that the demands datacentres are making are more than the infrastructure can provide, so use low power using systems where you can to reduce the load on the power infrastructure.
The second thing that surprised him was that the EPA fellow produced a couple of slides on global warming. It basically covered the science, and the EPA fellow said, we recognize it as real, we expect that there will be legislation and regulation in the future on this issue, so this is a heads up from the EPA.
Anecdotal but interesting.
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Cam,
the archive of the information society---a digital database that accumulates past time in a place outside of time--- presupposes the energy of industrial society. Interesting .
Can we think of these online data spaces as heterotopias--a spatial term--“an other-place” opposed to utopias; a real actual space.
If the design of spaces reflects the structures of power in the space, then Heterotopia (a la Foucault) signifies an emancipatory counter-place, which relentlessly consumes the emerging possibilities to challenge with the governing politics.
Is this kind of digital database a site of a power struggle? For the dominant power structure it is a place where the existing ruling system is secured; and yet, for the marginal, it is a place where confrontation is now possible.
Can we think that way?