This article is the winning entry of the Epistle Writing Prize 2024, an annual competition dedicated to recognizing outstanding writing on design, architecture, and the environment.
We might be in the age of the digital cloud - however celestial or ethereal it may appear to be - but it is not only incontrovertibly material but also a powerful ecological force. In present times, data centers are mammoth powerhouses of modern information, communication, and technology industries with giant servers that store and process data. While their proliferation is in a sense, a consequence of our consumption patterns, and as the global demand for the digital grows, so does the data center footprint.
As nations worldwide race to achieve data sovereignty, environmentalists and climate activists lament the destruction of land by the sheer magnitude of desolation that the data center engenders. What is evident is that these centers, as much as they stand tall as factory-like libraries, are integral laboratories for exploring what a sustainable digital future could take shape as. However, the question remains: can such a future truly be realized?
