What Do Data Centers Do and Why Are They Necessary?

Data centers play an important function in our modern digital world. The problem is that they are physical entities in the real world, and though nearly everyone uses this technology, it's no surprise that many people ascribe to the NIMBY view: Not In My Back Yard.

So, what is a data center? Data centers are specialized facilities that house the computing infrastructure powering our digital world. They're essential because modern society relies on massive, reliable, and scalable data processing that can't be handled by individual devices or homes. Here's a break down the key reasons, with real-world context.

Centralized Power for Massive Scale
Everyday apps (like streaming Netflix, searching Google, or running AI ) generate trillions of data requests daily. A single smartphone can't process this—it's like asking one ant to lift a mountain.

In contrast to the limited capabilities of our laptops, iPads, desktop devices and smartphones, DCs pack thousands of servers into one secure building, providing the raw computing power (CPU/GPU) and storage needed. For example, Google's data centers handle 8.5 billion daily searches, using energy equivalent to a small city. Without DCs, the internet would grind to a halt; loading a webpage could take minutes. 

24/7 Reliability and Uptime

My year in Puerto Rico (1978-79) gave me many memories and taught me many lessons. One of them was the importance of our energy grid, hence my desire to see Minnesota lift its nuclear moratorium. 

In Puerto Rico we had blackouts or brownouts nearly every week. Sometimes they lasted hours and occasionally all day. Power outages, hardware failuility res, or internet glitches happen everywhere. Although it is only an inconvenience for most of us, for businesses downtime can be costly—for example, Amazon loses $66,000 per minute during outages. 

This is what data centers are all about. They include redundant systems: backup generators, cooling (to prevent server meltdowns), and failover tech. Tier IV data centers guarantee 99.995% uptime (less than 30 minutes of downtime per year).

Security and Compliance

Data Security is also an important attribute of DCs. Breaches cost $4.45 million on average (IBM, 2023). Storing sensitive info (health records, financials) on personal devices invites hacks.

DCs offer physical security (guards, biometrics), encryption, and compliance with laws like GDPR or HIPAA. Servers are in locked vaults, monitored 24/7 and protect against cyber threats.

Efficiency and Cost Savings

Running servers at home is wasteful—your PC uses 10x more energy per task than a data center server which optimizes with shared resources, economies of scale, and green tech (e.g., Microsoft's underwater data centers for natural cooling). One center can serve millions, slashing costs by 80% vs. on-premise setups. As a result cloud services are affordable for all; AWS powers 33% of the web for pennies per use.

Enabling Innovation and the Future

Emerging tech like AI, IoT (50 billion devices by 2030), and VR needs exascale computing—far beyond consumer hardware. Data centers fuel breakthroughs in technology. NVIDIA's AI training for self-driving cars requires 100,000+ GPUs in centers. Hyperscalers (Google, Meta) build them to handle exponential data growth (90% of all data created in the last 2 years). This is where the power comes for ChatGPT, autonomous vehicles, and personalized medicine. Without data centers, AI wouldn't exist at scale.

In short, data centers are the "electric grid" of the digital age—unseen but indispensable. Global demand is exploding (expected to consume 8% of world electricity by 2030), driving innovations like edge computing to bring them closer to users. If we didn't have them, we'd revert to a pre-internet world. 

Do you have questions on specifics, like sustainability? Fire away!

How Are We Doing?

Anyone who's grown up watching football has seen it. Now, in both NFL and college football, hot dogging has been outlawed. Last year, in fact, the Cleveland Browns even lost a game because of one of their players got a penalty for hot dogging after a play. These hot dogging rules are of relatively recent vintage, the crime being excessive celebration after a big play.

I've always thought it would be fun to make a short satirical film with some over-the-top hot dogging by everyone involved. The quarterback throws a pass and starts doing back flips because it's on target. The receiver catches it and starts dancing. The cornerback wings him and starts hot dogging for his tackle. The ref throws a flag and then starts celebrating for having made the call. The camera swings up into the announcer's booth and Al Michaels is high fiving everyone for the way he called it.

Bottom line: hot dogging was getting pretty annoying.

There's something else I've begun to find annoying. I'm wondering how and when the people who do this can be penalized. I'm talking about those "How are we doing?" follow-up emails and phone calls and text messages that occur after we make a transaction with a big company. It's not only intrusive but half the time I wonder if they really care.

I received an email from one company with 15 questions about the 30 second transaction beginning with the question, Did they address you by name? I don't remember.

What's interesting is that many people foresaw these customer service techniques more than half a century ago. One such visionary was French philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul, author of The Technological Society. In his foreword to the book Robert K. Merton writes, "...Ellul's subect, comes close to giving the reader a sense of what the dominance of technique might mean for the present and future of man. In short... The Technological Society requires us to examine anew what the author describes as the essential tragedy of a civilization increasingly dominated by technique." And that's what annoys us. 

When Ellul addresses technology, he isn't simply referring to machines. He's talking about technique as applied to sales and customer service and even employer/employee relations. The sum total of everything is to leave humanity de-humanized. Or, as he puts it in his notes to the reader, "the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity."

The common denominator in Haxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984 and C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength was their future vision of de-humanized mankind. The forms of society differed but the net outcome was common, a non-thinking, emotionally flat, easily managed will-less humanity. In Lewis' book this antithesis of man was called the unman.

Twice this week I had dealings with my cell phone company. Twice they texted me after to ask how their customer service was. Twice I was annoyed and did not reply. The banks do it. My internet service provider sends an email after I make a call because my service was interrupted.

Nowadays we have techniques for making decisions, techniques for handling difficult customers, techniques for "closing the sale," techniques for being better dressed, techniques for looking like we care when we're listening, and techniques for meeting people of the opposite sex. And though we call it "spin" now, there are techniques for manipulating the masses by means of the media.

Efficiency, per se, is not always a bad thing. We all hate inefficient meetings, for example. But when it becomes an ultimiate value that negates everything else, including common sense, we have a problem.

Here are a few comments from Amazon.com reviews and reviewers:

"With monumental calm and maddening thoroughness he goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized -- rendered efficient -- and diminished in the process.... " ~Paul Pickrel, Harper's

"The Technological Society is one of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself -- unless we take the necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs." ~Robert Theobald, The Nation

"Whether you agree or disagree with Ellul, he will cause you to question the influence of technology on your life. Without doubt the drive for efficiency (the ultimate law of technology) impacts all our relationships - with our families, our neighbors, our communities, our friends, and our government." ~A reviewer named Joyce

To counteract all this, it's more important than ever that we treat one another like people, and not simply go through the motions. We ourselves will become more human this way.

How are we doing?

Efficiency’s Downside

No question one of the hallmarks of progress is the efficiency it offers. Plumbing is a far more efficient system for delivering water to the house than walking out to pump it from a well. The efficiencies of mass production enable us to acquire more goods at affordable prices than when pins and parcels were made one at a time.

The Internet has created countless additional efficiencies. Easy access to information was the first I noticed, eliminating the need to wait for the library to open to call one’s local reference librarian, a phone number I had at one time kept memorized. With the advent of social media it has become remarkably easy to interact with and develop friendships with new people from all over the world.

But many of these efficiencies have a downside as well. A few examples are in order.

Cars can help us get from place to place quicker and more efficiently than walking, biking or public transportation. But travel by car nearly eliminates all interaction with others that we might encounter by the alternative means of transportation. When walking we see the world around us in far greater detail. And in both walking and biking we leave a far smaller "carbon footprint" than any internal combustion engine. And as for buses, subways and trains, I still have many memories of insights gained through first hand encounters with others whom I would never have met any other way. I learned a few shocking things as well from the things high school students were talking about on the bus as I rode to work.

Another example... In the realm of sales, many techniques have been developed based on psychology and science so that the salesperson improves his close ratio or success rate. Unfortunately, as consumers get more educated they are increasingly aware of these wiles. The net result is that after a while we become unable to discern whether people are being honest or if we're just being manipulated into a decision. For example, I frequently have a hard time trying to decide what to order in a restaurant. If I ask the waiter or waitress about a dish, they so often say, "That's my favorite thing on the menu!" that I have begun to wonder if they were trained to say that. It's making me insecure about asking servers for advice any more.

In the arts and crafts realm, the people making money locally are the one's who efficiently "crank it out." The market for work that is painstakingly detailed and personal hardly provides a living wage. So our world is a bit poorer because the ornate carvings in furniture are gone, the architectural craftsmanship is neglected because we can't afford to pay craftsmen what they're worth to do such things.

And now, to Facebook. Whereas it is a marvel how many fascinating people we can meet today via social media, there are downsides. Initially, many pundits criticized the Internet because of the damage it would do to language. It waits to be seen whether this is a legitimate fear or not. What concerns me more is what it is doing to friendship. Someone once said, and I paraphrase, "If a man is worth knowing, he is worth knowing well." But how well can we get to know people when we now know so many?

Everything happens so fast. We have more relationships than we can manage, and we end up interacting with them so superficially because who has time to invest in so many lives. But yes, the communication is very efficient. We can reach so many so very quickly, follow what they are doing, see their pictures and briefly share in their experiences. It's all quite amazing. But... at what price?

Speed is what we've embraced. Fast food, fast commutes, fast news and information. Maybe this is why God introduced the Sabbath, a day set aside for rest and reflection. A day to catch our breath, because it truly is an amazing world and if we didn't stop to reflect now and then we just might make ourselves dizzy trying to embrace it all.

Toward Ever Greater Efficiencies

It really is a whole new world out there. Yesterday I was talking with a friend about the efficiencies the Internet offers. Instead of driving to the bookstore and looking for a book, I can go to amazon.com and read reviews, buy it used or new and never leave my office. The retailers who have “pure” eCommerce businesses never concern themselves with a dressy showroom floor, sales staff standing around waiting for customers or any of that. They have shelves and a warehouse, servers and tech people keeping the show running. Efficiency is the name of the game.

Well, salespeople are learning about efficiencies, too. Instead of platte(sp) books and trips to the library or County Office Building, they have been discovering an increasing variety of web tools to help generate leads, reduce time preparing contact lists, etc.

Here’s an interesting story about a guy in real estate, Justin McClelland, who found a screen scraping tool for harvesting data and organizing it. The product he found is Mozenda and the amazing thing for Justin was that he could do it for two weeks on a free trial basis. What I found interesting is how quickly he learned it, and also how quickly he was eager to share this “secret weapon” with others. He even made a YouTube video to show how easy it is to use.

Evidently the program is so easy to use he didn’t even need to call tech support, though he acknowledges that he has a small measure of programming or computer-related experience.

McClelland’s business is called Schwaps.com and to my surprise I was able to find and follow him on Twitter under the handle Schwaps if you want to follow him.

Maybe you know a few efficiencies yourself. Certainly Google has helped make finding information easy. I routinely found myself calling the library help desk to verify information earlier in my writing career. I can’t remember the last time I called the library help desk.

Efficiency isn’t everything, but it’s something. It helps companies remain competitive in a fast paced world. In Orson Welles’ film adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial the main character works as an accountant at a company in which there are more than eight hundred accountants sitting at desks with ledger books and adding machines. That room full of adding machines has been replaced by a computer today.

The human cost of progress is a major challenge for business owners when it comes to the efficiencies of automation and technology. This was my friend's concern. How far should we go in the adaptation of technologies that replace jobs? On the other hand, in a global economy, to what extent do we have a choice as other countries produce goods with increasing ease and reduced costs?

That was the real discussion yesterday. He said that business consultants are now reading Seneca, the Roman stoic philosopher, in order to have a more humane approach to decisions affecting employees. My feeling is that failing to incorporate efficiencies into a business model is a sure way to doom it so that all your employees' jobs are imperiled.

If I get a chance, I might examine Seneca, but the Golden Rule is pretty good guidance, too, when it comes to treatment of employees: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." And as for efficiency, it is one part of the equation for success that keeps us competitive, helping us to leverage our time so we can do the real work of closing deals, providing good service or producing products needed in the marketplace.

Ask Justin McClelland. Would he rather spend four hours or four thousand hours assembling a list of prospects for his business?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

The current July/August edition of The Atlantic has an eye-riveting cover story: Is Google Making Us Stupid? The sub-head of this feature by Nicholas Carr is, WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS.

Carr insists he is not a Luddite, no doubt for fear that if he gets labelled "anti-progress" his thesis will not be taken seriously. He claims that computers in general, and the Internet more specifically, and Google most deliberately, are changing the way we think in ways that should alarm us.

The positive side of Google is self-evident. Information that once might have taken days for a college paper may often be located in minutes, or faster. There are tremendous efficiencies here with regard to information.

But Carr proposes that what's going on has insidious side effects with regard to our human-ness in the same way the Industrial Age crushed people through its commitment to "maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output." Google's mission, he says, is to make our brains more efficient.

According to Google's chief exec Eric Schmidt, the company is founded on the idea of total measurement and systematization. The mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Who can argue with that? We all know about useless data and useless information.

Carr points out that this kind of efficiency creates new absolutes that do not leave room for "the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed."

In some ways this is not a new phenomenon. Edwin Aldrin, in his walk on the moon with Neil Armstrong in 1969, had fifteen seconds for "being human." The rest of his four hour stint was an effort to efficiently set up and execute eight hours of experiments. Some would say, "Hey, you got the privilege to have someone else pay for the ride that gave you a dream experience." But it could also be argued that this scientific approach to everything does something unkind to the soul.

Maybe that's Carr's concern. I don't really know how much weight to give it, but I sort of hear where he's coming from.

The author appears fair in his assessments. That is, he notes how Socrates objected to writing because people would rely on the written word and not use their brains to remember things. Yet the written word has opened worlds for us. And Gutenberg likewise had critics, but the availability of books has likewise created manifold blessings.

My take here is that we need to assume some personal responsibility in this matter. I myself do art, putz about the yard trimming a few branches, listen to music and in this manner bring balance to that "other side." And a daily time of reflection, journal writing, re-centering is for me something akin to the "breathe in, breathe out" rhythm of life. The goal of life is not to become a brain, but to become fully human, which includes mind, will, emotions... and soul.