While DTN typically focuses on the innovations and changes occurring in the tech world, an article in Scholastic, a student magazine published at the University of Notre Dame, caught our attention.
The author, Ellie Cooney, is a Notre Dame student who grew up in Northern Virginia and has fond memories as a child of driving past the historic Bull Run battlefields in Manassas. She does a fine job of capturing the memory: ” My neighbor and I would drive through the battlefields on our way to summer camp at a farm in Manassas. I’d stare out the window at the cannons littered across open fields, the wooden fences leaning with time.”
She goes on to lament the rise of a data center near the battlefield, then goes on to raise concerns about a data center being planned near South Bend.
The writer is worried about the rise of data centers, but this isn’t just another generic complaint about them. Rather, it wrestles with the changes that data centers bring and asks whether that change is worth the cost.
As she concludes: “We live in a next-step world where society is constantly coming up with ways to optimize and streamline our daily lives, and data centers fit into this future-focused mindset. But they’re almost counterproductive to the things that truly matter. In Virginia, a historical site backdropped by mass innovation provides a scary juxtaposition between past and future. In Indiana, a local ecosystem is slowly being sucked away by the hand of AI. Sure, ChatGPT is great and all, but is this really what we want? Is this really what it means to live in 2026?”
Is this what it means to live in 2026?
It’s encouraging to see younger people who have been raised on the technology that data centers provide — smart phones, smart boards in schools, laptop computers, streaming video, streaming music, 24/7 online banking, to name just a few — coming to understand that all that technology does not happen in some ethereal “cloud,” but in a real-world building that houses the servers that drive it.
Is this what it means to live in 2026?
In a word, yes.
But it’s also worth remembering that without that infrastructure, this well-written, thoughtful column likely isn’t found, and certainly isn’t as easily disseminated.
This tension between growing the digital world that is driving our economy and navigating how we build out the infrastructure that makes it possible can lead to better discussions. Rather than moratoria, realizing the connection between the life we lead and what it requires can focus the debate on siting and design and community benefits. All issues that VFP has highlighted over the past couple of weeks that data center developers are working to help find solutions to.
But first, we have to realize the tension.
Cooney does. And in so doing, she’s set the table for a richer, more productive debate.
Something to think about heading into the weekend.
