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Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt |
TOO MUCH COMPUTE
A fascinating investigation into the infrastructure of the digital age, and a revelatory exploration of how our demands for data, and the all too willing suppliers eager to meet our needs, are consuming the planet.
At the center of the story are so-called hyperscale data centers: the real-life physical structures that are the mythical cloud. These data centers are sometimes as large as twelve football fields and are cleverly placed and negotiated with areas often desperate for work, searching for economic renewal, or radically business-friendly and tax-free. But the vital organs of the digital age come with profound costs in the power they consume, the water they use, and the waste they generate.
Despite protestations to the contrary from the leading companies in the great data gold rush (Microsoft, Google, Amazon), the AI revolution is only accelerating the demand and supply for data. After years of promising to reduce emissions and to bring their operations in line with global climate goals, the major players in data are instead rapidly expanding their physical footprints all over the world, blowing off pretenses of environmental responsibility, and exerting profound control over local and global economies.
TOO MUCH COMPUTE captures a fascinating inflection point in human history, where the digital and virtual realms we have created are now starting to eat the physical and natural world we inhabit. Economically, the expansion of data empires is a new form of imperialism. Politically, the growing influence of their power has undercurrents of fascism while being cloaked in a faux philosophy of longtermism that compromises everyone's present, except for, conveniently, their own. And environmentally, it's simply a disaster.
Paris Marx is a journalist who publishes in Wired, Time, and MIT Technology Review, among other publications. His Tech Won't Save Us podcast has 25,000 listeners per episode, while his Disconnect newsletter has a reach of over 10,000 people who get his updates right in their inbox. Beyond that, he has over 50,000 followers on Twitter/X, and tens of thousands more on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, and all the rest.
Despite protestations to the contrary from the leading companies in the great data gold rush (Microsoft, Google, Amazon), the AI revolution is only accelerating the demand and supply for data. After years of promising to reduce emissions and to bring their operations in line with global climate goals, the major players in data are instead rapidly expanding their physical footprints all over the world, blowing off pretenses of environmental responsibility, and exerting profound control over local and global economies.
TOO MUCH COMPUTE captures a fascinating inflection point in human history, where the digital and virtual realms we have created are now starting to eat the physical and natural world we inhabit. Economically, the expansion of data empires is a new form of imperialism. Politically, the growing influence of their power has undercurrents of fascism while being cloaked in a faux philosophy of longtermism that compromises everyone's present, except for, conveniently, their own. And environmentally, it's simply a disaster.
Paris Marx is a journalist who publishes in Wired, Time, and MIT Technology Review, among other publications. His Tech Won't Save Us podcast has 25,000 listeners per episode, while his Disconnect newsletter has a reach of over 10,000 people who get his updates right in their inbox. Beyond that, he has over 50,000 followers on Twitter/X, and tens of thousands more on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, and all the rest.
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Book Published by Riverhead |