Where does your data come from?

Recently, we have been discussing our connection to food and the natural environment. All of us spend a lot of time, perhaps too much time, consuming and creating data on the internet and over phone networks. While data production and consumption doesn’t directly gobble up trees or burn coal, it does require a lot of hardware… and lots of electricity. Take a look at the link to the slideshow and New York Times article describing what goes on in a modern data center. Large data centers consume as much power as a decent sized town.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2219188/Inside-Google-pictures-gives-look-8-vast-data-centres.html