I Am The Reason For The Demand For Data Centers - A Digital Mea Culpa

 

We have certainly seen our share of flurry lately surrounding the attempt at building a data center next to I-96 in Lowell Township. Meeting halls were flooded with folks, many questions went unanswered or dodged. As an aside, kudos to our community for keeping things rather civil in this day of copious hollering and threats. Well done.

I am here to answer the elephant in the room question – Why the huge uptick in demand for data centers all over Michigan and other parts of the country? In case you skipped the title – I am here to tell you that I am the reason for the demand for MORE data centers. Yup – my fault.

For those who do not know me, I have tried to live a life with action and concern toward the environment. My mother taught me to avoid waste and to recycle anything that could be recycled. I have ridden a fully electric motorcycle for eight years. My home and business pay Lowell Light and Power a wee bit extra so that our electricity comes from renewable resources. I walk to work and our recycle bin is full every other Thursday from items saved for such things at home and work.

Enough of my green efforts – I have realized over the last few days that my lifestyle is to blame for the demand for new data centers in Michigan and elsewhere. Guilty as charged.

Take my well publicized love of music. In olden times I had a record collection that did not cry out for any type of storage other than the fruit crates they were stored in. Today I have a dozen and a half playlists on YouTube Music. A couple of the playlists are utilized in our store and both of them contain over nine hours of carefully chosen (by me) music that I want to play in our store. My playlists are available at home, work, and you might see me walking down the street wearing a big pair of headphones while listening to one of them down loaded onto my phone so I can really enjoy my walks.

In ancient days I relied on my memory of great concerts. These days I have two or three different videos of Phil Collins and Chester Thompson playing their famed “drum duet” from back in the day. I am no longer dependent on my brain to replay the fantastic concert by Todd Rundgren and Utopia promoting the “Ra” album, I can find it all on YouTube.

My use of Facebook (Meta) has been going on for years. Sixteen years to be exact. Just yesterday some random picture/post of mine showed up with the title “A memory from 14 years ago.” Scrolling through my posts and pictures I come across tons of them from days gone by – I have a great one of my grandson in diapers with a fantastic expression on his face. He is eight years old now. I have another one holding our oldest grandson as a toddler upside down in one arm (I was stronger then) like a fish. That grandson will be driving by himself in about two months. My Meta digital footprint is 16 years long and includes tons of pictures and a few videos. I have used Meta to promote our store for about the same number of years – and we love to post pictures and videos of our latest offerings. All digital data that requires storage somewhere.

I am most comfortable behind a keyboard, but some of my customers insist on communicating via text. When it comes to my ability to text, I am ever thankful to the AI gods, (there are AI gods, right?), for the ability to put auto fill to use when I text. It saves me gobs of time not having to text my full name, the store hours, and a host of other things provided for me just to help me text.

I like to play word games on my phone prior to falling asleep. Some where some data center is keeping tabs about how many games I have played, my winning percentage, and a host of other factoids about my hobby. Speaking of apps, I have a couple on my phone that I no longer use. For a while I tried a fitness tracker thing. While I no longer use it, I can rest assured that if I blew the dust off it and put it back on my wrist it would and could recall how many steps I took on my last measured walk two years ago along with my heart rate and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I could go on – like telling you how revolutionary GPS was when I worked at a radio station in the 90’s and an engineer showed up with one. How antiquated that would sound when our phones and cars and watches and tablets now tell us where we are with dang near pin point accuracy.

The fact of the matter is that my digital consumption is responsible for the demand for electricity burning, water gulping data centers. It is my fault that vast areas are filled with the mind numbing hum of computers and/or their cooling systems needed just for me to enjoy my music or see that cute video of my grand daughter from last year.

Very sorry to have caused all this fuss.