Comment by rpdillon
11 hours ago
I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters.
The Trump administration pulled a bunch of ocean sensors, whose data was aggregated in the cloud, in an attempt to save money. Except, those sensors were not only providing research data on changes in ocean currents, but helping fisheries make predictions about yield. The administration backtracked because of this.
There is a similar story with weather forecasting, and farmers being able to manage their crops.
Let's not even get started on the economic impact worldwide of datacenters were not available to process stock and bond trades.
New technologies seem optional, but once society passes some tipping point in their adoption, they no longer are. AI isn't there yet, but cloud computing is.
I think I've given you far more than you're due in this conversation, so I'll stop here.
In short, I think you're being dismissive, particularly when you try to frame my position as "society is propped up by script kiddies". Seems like a deeply inaccurate way of summarizing my points.
> I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters.
These things were with us and worked better before datacenters even existed. Datacenters are a mere convenience which is now used to force monopolization of compute while subjecting society to extremely risky, but unnecessary dependencies and centralization.
You say we're already there? A good reason to start undoing it ASAP.
That's not the proposal, and is utter fantasy. I'm engaging a hypothetical here -- none of what's being discussed is even close to reality, in the sense that it won't be implemented. There will be new datacenters, some communities will successfully resist, but many won't.
What you propose is similar to proposing that we'll solve climate change by moving back to horse-and-buggy. Theoretically possible, practically impossible.
> What you propose is similar to proposing that we'll solve climate change by moving back to horse-and-buggy.
And strawmen, don't forget the strawmen... can you stop doing that for a second? You're just underlying your lack of arguments.
> There will be new datacenters, some communities will successfully resist, but many won't.
We moved from "don't resist or else" to "resistance is futile"... what else is new?
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