Data Promises @ Across the Layers (Feb 20, 2023, 8am MST)

Building from years of research into data centers and the cloud, as well as explorations into emergent alternatives to energy- and water -intensive infrastructures that power the internet (and increasingly AI and VR, too), I’d like to use “data promises” as a provocation for discussion. Ideally, we would come together as a group to make a list of the promises that data (writ large) offers – data as the new oil, the new currency, the new bacon. I have formulated a few preliminary (yet rough) categories, such as: value, prediction, fidelity, memory, reward, and self-governance (autonomy), that we can use as a springboard for our conversation. The point of this is to build and share common ground about what is often assumed, but not explicitly said, about our global hyperinvestments in data – as concept, application, and lifestyle. Each category will be measured up against its environmental costs, considerations and impacts.