This article by Jane Anne Morris (DemocracyThemePark.org) was originally published in the Winter 2008 edition of Synthesis/Regeneration.

One distracted click during my Internet research for this article gave me instant access to 936 photos of Brad Pitt. According to people who know, that click activated some 7000 computers in the search, and perhaps twice as many more trying to induce me to buy something or type in my personal data.1 And because I recycle, adjust my thermostat to save energy, and scrawl grocery lists on the backs of envelopes, I had to wonder what ecological footprint my peek at Brad had left behind. After considerable clicking and flipping (I still do hardcopy), I stared into the Internet and saw the car of the twenty-first century.

Let me back up and ask a question: Where do you think all your stored emails are? They’re not in the hands of tiny file clerks inside your computer — exactly. Nor in the library computer, where you can access them. Where are all those Bible-length attachments that nobody read but you’re saving anyway? The hot web sites and blogs? Where do we imagine all this stuff is?

It’s in the Cloud — the everything-seemingly-everywhere there-ness of the Internet. The Internet Cloud is generated and maintained by facilities called data centers or web server farms. These rustic-sounding server farms (think of a geek with a hayfork?), like Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are tucked — if something that covers dozens or even hundreds of acres can be said to be “tucked” — here and there across the country, downplayed if not concealed in generic buildings.

At server farms, zillions of complexly linked computers constantly juggle electrons storing messages, texts, songs, web sites, advertisements, film clips, birthday cards and other cultural effluvia. The mission of each server is to prevent captive electrons from doing what all free electrons want to do: dissolve back into the electromagnetic ether to hook up randomly. All that data coded into electronic pluses and minuses enables you, at any moment, to get the latest information about a massacre in Colómbia, a cancer cluster in New Jersey, or the current address of your high school sweetheart. Considerable server effort is devoted to articulating Brad’s dimples.

The mission of each server is to prevent captive electrons from dissolving back into the electromagnetic ether to hook up randomly.

Server farms are double-dippers. There, colonies of warehouses packed with rows of racked, stacked computers draw electricity like black holes suck light. That’s the first scoop. Because the heat generated by this conglomeration of circuitry, unless dispersed, will damage the equipment, server farms are air conditioned to a brisk temperature. That’s the second scoop. A typical server farm uses at least half of its electricity for cooling.2 Imagine a refrigerator wrapped around an electric stove, and you have the essence of a server farm: a pig-in-a-blanket that consumes electricity in almost unimaginable quantities. 
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