Anthropologist and Cloud Computing Researcher – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Water is a huge issue when it comes to data centres, and there are some water scarce communities where data centres are coming in and contributing to that scarcity. Another issue is the noise pollution of data centres. Most people aren’t even aware of such risks when supporting a data centre project. The data centre companies will move into a community by promising jobs and return on investment. Then there will be maybe half a dozen people working at the data centre from the community and rest are brought in from outside. I think that people are aware of the risks of say drawing 7,000,000 gallons of water a day out of a scarce water system supply. They’re aware of that risk but not be able to evaluate the return on investment. The residents don’t realize what they’re signing up for and how this industry is harming their communities.