Data dilemma

Northern Ireland only has a few small uncontroversial data centres, but in other parts of Britain there are giant data centres that are attracting strong opposition.
 
The complaints are getting more frequent and more critical – of constant noise, rising utility bills, massive consumption of electricity and water, and air pollution.
 
But few people are joining the dots here. It seems to have escaped most people’s attention that everything we do on the internet uses data centres, so we actually need more and more of them, and if local resistance makes building them difficult or even impossible we have a major problem.
 
Most of us use smart phones. Most of us use a variety of online services. Most of us use the internet heavily. What would happen if construction of data centres couldn’t keep up with demand?
 
It would be impossible to limit people’s use of the internet, as we’re now so highly dependent on it.
 
But I haven’t seen any journalist considering what would happen if the supply of data centres was lagging behind the volume of internet use. It’s assumed that data centres will keep multiplying and multiplying as needed. Which is a big assumption.

PS: New York has banned construction of data centres using 50 megawatts or more for one year

Pic: A data centre in the Netherlands

Before smartphones

I was astonished to read that 91 per cent of 11 year olds have a smart phone, and 20 per cent of children own them by the age of four. A lot of parents try to prevent their children from owning a smart phone, because of all the obvious dangers, but that's hard when most of their school mates already have one.

It's hard to imagine what my schooldays would have been like if I had a smart phone. I didn't even have a landline never mind a smart phone. It meant that I very much lived in a boarding-house bubble, completely removed from the outside world. There was no TV or radio or newspapers so world events passed me by. We were discouraged from wandering around the adjacent town so there was little chance of making outside friends.

If I was at school now and I had a smart phone, above all that would connect me to the outside world. I could keep up with world events, check out websites that interested me, keep in touch with my family, get advice on personal problems. But at the same time I would have access to all sorts of undesirable websites promoting porn or anorexia or racism or dangerous drugs or simply plausible misinformation.

On balance I think that despite the deprivations I experienced I probably had a healthier childhood without a smart phone and without all the hazards it would have presented me with. I could enjoy simple pleasures like reading and walking without being glued to that beguiling little screen.

And there was something to be said for not being constantly in touch with my family and all their oddities.