Data Centers

 There is plenty of news about a data center coming to your town. What are these data centers and why is everyone so concerned?

Some think this is the invasion of ‘Alternative Information’ centers that are coming to take our jobs. Some think they are cold storage warehouses for walls of computers. Some wonder if the expense, use of water and electricity are worth it while others know they are the necessity of our digital world.

Computers have been around longer than I have. They were mostly math calculators crunching numbers faster than the mind could calculate. My first connection with computers were in college (they were probably in high school, but I never noticed). Registration for classes was like a market fare. Some classes were required to get a degree in a certain category while others were optional. College was a four-year chance to add enough credits to get a diploma in the field of your future employment. As a class was chosen, a punch card was placed with your name to save you a seat in that classroom at a certain day and time. At the end of the year, a computer would calculate your yearly score for a Grade Point Average. When your GPA equaled the requirement for graduation, the school printed a piece of paper that proved you’d been edubacated and you were off to work.

My work office was manual records. Attendance, payroll, vacations and discipline records were written by hand and sent to corporate. In secret secured rooms with low lights, no windows and blast of air conditioning, there were machines the size of refrigerators with spinning reels of paper tape. The written logs were keyboarded in code to the computer to store and print out reports. As long as the checks were delivered every two weeks, life was fine.

Once there was a conflict of records about who or when vacations were used or cancelled. The office manager and secretary couldn’t figure it out, so an office at corporate was contacted for they held the approved final records. A giant ledger, the size of something in Harry Potter, was opened and searched for the time accumulated and used. I was surprised.

The ‘production’ department had the state-of-the-art computer system that cause linotype operators strike and lose their jobs. Operators sat at darkened room with dos green monitors keying in code that would print to a punch tape and then processed through another machine to print out on slick paper type that could be cut apart with box cutters, waxed and pasted into position for a camera the size of a bus could take a large photo to be converted to plastic impression to be placed on the press. The mainframe that ran the show was keep in a cold room that only the engineers (former IT) had access to.

In the early 80’s, I was sent to a presentation of desktop computing. I saw the potential that one little grey box could do illustration, photography, text and layout. While corporate was focused on Microsoft Office (as they should be) with spreadsheets and words for reports and memos, I was following another platform named ‘Apple’. All the software (and hardware) were new and experimental and constantly changing and reinventing the processes. Since there were no classes or training other than the bibles that came with the software, I’d go into the office on weekends and experiment with each program.

Once the internet appeared linking the world to e-mail, I could continually ask software companies about flaws in the applications and a wish list for the next upgrade. I got to test beta versions of digital cameras, cell phones, new high speed processing chips and a new invention, the laptop. The drawing tables, T-squares, triangles and press type went away.

What does all that have to do with these ‘Data Centers’?

In your hand you have a cell phone with more computer power than what put man on the moon. It saves contacts, calendar alerts, videos, photos, music, e-mails, internet connections, podcast and telephone calls and text.

Where does all that stuff get saved?

Even with the latest greatest technology there is no chip large enough to hold all your stuff on the phone. There is no floppy disc slot or thumb drive that can hold all your selfies, so they go to the ‘cloud’.

These ‘Data Centers’ ARE the ‘cloud’. Interconnected by satellites they are the ‘library’ for immediate access. All the search engines use it. Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, X (Y & Z), Spotify…. etc. It is the massive cross-reference used to bring you your kitten pictures and your vacation shots and your music playlist and your current up-to-date memes and reels.

If there is a problem, when you click on a connection and get a message of 404: Page Not Found or your airplane captain gets a report from the air traffic control tower that they are not sure about landing instructions, time to upgrade the cloud with a newer improved ‘Data Center’.

What happens if you lose contact with your family? Remote working and learning will be unavailable? Shopping online will not be accessible and even your health care will faulter to life threatening measures. How will you fight your way out of a paper bag without GPS?

So like gas stations and mail boxes and telephone booths and fire hydrants and convenience stores, there will a ‘Data Center’ on every corner.