The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 44 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage
Open accessAbstract
In the age of machine learning, cryptocurrency mining, and seemingly infinite data storage capacity enabled by cloud computing, the environmental costs of ubiquitous computing in modern life are obscured by the sheer complexity of infrastructures and supply chains involved in even the simplest of digital transactions. How does computation contribute to the warming of the planet? As information technology (IT) capacity demands continue to trend upward, what are some of the ecological obstacles that must be overcome to accommodate an ever-expanding, carbon-hungry Cloud? How do these material impacts play out in everyday life, behind the scenes, where servers, fiber optic cables, and technicians facilitate cloud services? This case study draws on firsthand ethnographic research in data centers—sprawling libraries of computer servers that facilitate everything from email to commerce—to identify some of the far-reaching and tangled environmental impacts of computation and data-storage infrastructures. It surveys a range of empirical accounts of server technicians to illustrate on-the-ground examples of material and ecological factors that permeate everyday life in the Cloud. These examples include air conditioning and thermal management, water cycling, and the disposal of e-waste. By attending to the culture of workplace practice and the behaviors and training of technicians in data centers, this case study reveals that the Cloud is not fully automated, nor is it hyperrational; emotion, instinct, and human judgment are enlisted to keep servers running. This case study closes with a speculative vignette that scales up from various local impacts to a planetary framework, sketching some of the particular ways that computation contributes to climate change and the Anthropocene.
Overview
AI snapshot
Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
This case study argues that the Cloud is material and ecological, drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork in North American data centers to trace carbon, water, noise, and e-waste impacts. It also shows that data center work is cultural and reliant on human judgment, not fully automated or hyperrational.
Key findings
- Data centers are carbon- and energy-intensive: cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage in most data centers; collectively they use 200 TWh annually, account for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions (2 percent including networked devices), and in some cases only 6–12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computation. The Cloud’s carbon footprint is greater than the airline industry’s, and a single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of fifty thousand homes. Training a handful of AI models can emit over 626,000 pounds of CO₂, and cryptocurrency production is estimated at 20–115 TWh annually, around 0.33 percent of global electricity usage.
- Water and noise are major local impacts: the NSA’s Utah Data Center uses seven million gallons of water daily; residents in Mesa, Arizona and Bluffdale, Utah face water shortages and power outages; and residents near data centers in Chandler, Arizona and Chicago’s Printer’s Row reported hypertension, elevated cortisol, and anxiety from continuous noise, even when decibel levels fell below local ordinance thresholds.
- E-waste and device turnover are severe: over 7 billion devices have been manufactured since 2007, with average lifespans under two years; less than 16 percent of annual e-waste is recycled; and a single desktop computer requires 240 kilograms of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms of chemicals, and 1,500 kilograms of water to manufacture.
- Sustainability is shaped by workplace culture: technicians rely on instinct, fear of downtime, and practices like “flood cooling,” showing that ecological impacts extend beyond design limits to human behavior, training, and norms.
Methods
- Design: an ethnographic case study based on five years of qualitative research and participant observation in North American data centers, supplemented by a broad literature overview across computer science, engineering, media studies, and related fields.
- Data/sample: firsthand fieldnotes and interviews with data center technicians and managers; community fieldwork in Mesa/Chandler, Arizona and Chicago’s Printer’s Row; industry meetups; and virtual interviews.
- Analysis: thematic and ethnographic analysis of material infrastructures and workplace culture, closing with a speculative vignette that scales local impacts to a planetary framework.
Limitations
- The paper states that carbon and energy figures are “far from comprehensive” because emissions data are often proprietary, forcing scholars and activists to rely on public records and voluntary company data; it also notes that cryptocurrency carbon estimates are debated.
- The paper states that its closing speculative vignette is unlikely to unfold as described.
- Evident from the text: the ethnographic scope is limited to North American data centers and selected communities, not a global representative sample, and the study does not provide systematic quantitative measurement of environmental impacts.
Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.
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Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
42 Sources not found · 16 Own interpretation · 16 No basis given · 3 Own result
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“there were days when the data centers, running diesel generators, vastly exceeded permissible decibel-thresholds for noise.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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In the paper
“Over the course of my fieldwork with the communities of Chandler and Printer’s Row, I learned that the “noise” of the Cloud uniquely eludes regulatory schemes.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [42]
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Data centers emit acoustic waste, what environmentalists call “noise pollution.””
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Cables, batteries, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), air conditioners (CRACs and CRAHs), power distribution units (PDUs), and transformers are also periodically decommissioned and disposed of, when warranties expire and units fail to perform with the high standards of reliability and redundancy set by entities like the Uptime Institute.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
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In the paper
“In Mesa, Arizona, where I spent six months researching the emergence of a desert data center hub, some politicians are now openly opposing the construction of data centers, framing the centers’ water usage as inessential and irresponsible given resource constraints.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [30]
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In the paper
“In many cases, the loudness of the data centers, as measured in decibels (dB), falls below the threshold of intolerance as prescribed by local ordinances.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
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In the paper
“In the early 2000s, this same fear led many technicians to resort to the wasteful practice of “flood cooling” to eliminate hotspots and stop thermal runaway events from causing downtime.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
What the sources say
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In the paper
“Efforts are underway in Europe and elsewhere to augment facility and equipment designs to extend the lifespan of units, more easily accommodate repair, and formalize a system of exchange to recycle old equipment using “materials passports” that precisely document unit histories, not unlike CARFAX.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
What the sources say
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In the paper
“estimates range anywhere from 20 to 115 TWh annually, around 0.33 percent of global electricity usage.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [28]
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hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“To cool, the Cloud burns carbon, what Jeffrey Moro calls an “elemental irony.””
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“some residents reported that the monotonal drone, a frequency hovering within the range of human speech, is particularly disturbing, given the attuned sensitivity of human ears to discern such frequencies above others.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
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A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“While more reliable technologies and heightened awareness to climate change have made “flood cooling” practices largely defunct today, I still observed behaviors in the data center that were similarly motivated by fear or “hunches,” like the one Tom had about aisle C9.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plainSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The Cloud’s stewards have a culture of their own.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“when residents contacted the authorities to intervene, to attenuate or quiet their noise, no action was taken, because the data centers had not technically violated the law, and their properties were zoned for industrial purposes.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [44]
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plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“this case study reveals that the Cloud is not fully automated, nor is it hyperrational; emotion, instinct, and human judgment are enlisted to keep servers running.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Abstract
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The servers that fill the halls of data centers are dense, specialized assets, with some units valued in the tens of thousands of US dollars.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“While the efforts of these communities to minimize the noise pollution harming them are ongoing, they are resigned to modest goals to improve rather than solve the problem.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Given the enormous financial cost for every minute of downtime in data centers, incidents attributable to human error are often “career-ending” for those involved, as one industry veteran relayed to me in a virtual interview.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Smaller-scale, traditional data centers have often been set up within older buildings that are not optimized for everchanging power, cooling, and data storage capacity needs.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“In Bluffdale, Utah, residents are suffering from water shortages and power outages, as a result of the nearby Utah Data Center, a facility of the US National Security Agency (NSA) that guzzles seven million gallons of water daily to operate.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [31]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“some of the most advanced, “hyperscale” data centers, like those maintained by Google, Facebook, and Amazon, have pledged to transition their sites to carbon-neutral via carbon offsetting and investment in renewable energy infrastructures like wind and solar, many of the smaller-scale data centers that I observed lack the resources and capital to pursue similar sustainability initiatives.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
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In the paper
“the material and political conditions of their manufacture, and the resources required for their production, remain obscured.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
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In the paper
“Other scholars have recently turned to speculative fiction to help identify potential harms that could arise from computing research practices, such as the collection of huge data sets compiled from publicly accessible social media sites.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
What the sources say
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In the paper
“larger mechanisms of accountability like the recent Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, a consortium of European data center companies and infrastructure providers promising to become “climate neutral” by 2050, provide a model for larger-scale regulatory initiatives that could make a more substantial impact.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
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In the paper
“in vast factories like Foxconn located in the Global South, where labor can be procured cheaply and legal protections for workers are scant, smartphones are assembled and shipped out to consumers, only to be discarded in a matter of months, to end up in e-waste graveyards like those of Agbogbloshie, Ghana”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
What the sources say
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In the paper
“companies like Google are pledging to go “water- positive” by 2030, committing to “replenish” 120 percent of the water they consume in their facilities and offices.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
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A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The Cloud is both cultural and technological.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Yet such individualized responses would not be enough to mitigate the crisis; individuals' digital abstinence would not likely exert enough market influence to stop or slow the expansion of the Cloud, with its servers and redundant chains of idling equipment designed to make the digital available anytime, anywhere.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
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In the paper
“These metals, many of which are toxic and contain radioactive elements, take millennia to decay.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [47]
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In the paper
“Unlike other industries, data centers are largely self-regulating: there is no sweeping federal agency to govern the siting and operation of new and existing facilities.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
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A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“I approach the study of the Cloud holistically, taking seriously the technological and material aspects of computation and data storage, while also attending to the ways that the Cloud is a social and cultural formation.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Introduction: Materializing the Immaterial
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“there are two computational processes performed by servers that are particularly energy-intensive and are of increasing concern to scholars, activists, and data center industry professionals: 1) machine learning and 2) cryptocurrency mining.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
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A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“computation is metabolic: to maximize returns on computational processes, energy inputs must match intensity in the same way that tons of cooling (BTUs) must be matched to electricity curves (kwh) to prevent thermal runaway.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
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In the paper
“the equivalent of one US dollar in Bitcoin requires over seventeen megajoules of energy to produce, which is double the amount of energy required to mine copper, gold, or platinum.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
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In the paper
“Under grueling conditions, miners tirelessly plumb the earth for the rare metals required to make information and communications technology (ICT) devices.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
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In the paper
“Media scholar Mél Hogan warns against entrusting “Big Tech” with its own regulation, given the companies’ financial ties to the fossil fuel industry and failure to meet the deadlines of previous pledges to reduce carbon emissions or other kinds of waste.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
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In the paper
“By implementing costly “closed-loop” water cooling systems, companies like Google and Cyrus One are able to recycle some of the wastewater used in evaporative cooling, though much of the water escapes into the atmosphere during the evaporative process.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [33]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“For places like Iceland, with free cooling and a largely sustainable geothermal energy grid, highperformance computation is a “natural” fit.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [26]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This shift from cooling air to cooling water is an attempt to reduce carbon footprint, but it comes at a cost.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“In North America, most data centers draw power from “dirty” electricity grids, especially in Virginia’s “data center alley,” the site of 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic in 2019.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [9]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“advances in machine learning have led to sustainability innovations in a number of industries and have advanced research to support environmentalist agendas.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [21]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“the story of the data center is as much about humans as it is about air conditioners, servers, and the messy cables I spent hours untangling as part of my initiation into this niche world.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In many data centers today, chilled water is piped through the latticework of server racks to more efficiently cool the facility, liquid being a superior convective agent than air.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“A holistic approach to environmental reforms in the data center industry requires consideration of the workplace culture and norms within data centers.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The case study illustrates that the ecological dynamics we find ourselves in are not entirely a consequence of design limits, but of human practices and choices-among individuals, communities, corporations, and governments-combined with a deficit of will and imagination to bring about a sustainable Cloud.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
- Rests on an assumption: A sustainable Cloud is achievable, so that the ecological problem is a matter of will and imagination rather than an unavoidable consequence of design limits.
In the paper
“training a handful of artificial intelligence models can emit over 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, as much as five American automobiles do over their lifespans.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [20]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“According to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, if the entire Cloud shifted to hyperscale facilities, energy usage might drop as much as 25 percent.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [13]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
In the paper
“Google and others pledge to invest in water infrastructure and community resources to enhance “water stewardship” and “water security.””
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [34]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
In the paper
“Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [18]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“many companies, universities, and others who operate their own small-scale data centers have begun to transfer their data to hyperscalers or cloud colocation facilities, citing energy cost reductions.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Some of these components have toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and must be disposed of rather than reused.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim could be matched to a paper in Crossref, so there is nothing to check it against.
In the paper
“Heat is the waste product of computation, and if left unchecked, it becomes a foil to the workings of digital civilization.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [6]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites [7]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“communities in the western United States are increasingly strained for water resources.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“Corporate pledges such as these, while laudable, are not enforceable, nor do they appear to be feasible given the explosive growth expected in data storage infrastructures over the next decade, a tripling by some estimates.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [35]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“in which climate models anticipate cataclysmic climate futures”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [54]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
In the paper
“Fictions…are not falsehoods but refashionings through which analysts experiment with different scenarios, trajectories, and reversals, elaborating new values and testing different possibilities for creating more just and equitable societies.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [52]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
In the paper
“environmental organizations like Greenpeace estimate that less than 16 percent of the tons of e-waste generated annually is recycled.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Immortal Waste
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [50]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
In the paper
“The survival of civilization now hinges on our collective capacities to envision and realize a sustainable future.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Conclusion: Cloud Futures
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [55]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
- Not matched
In the paper
“the mining of cryptocurrency is a computationally intensive process with a growing ecological impact.”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Cloud the Carbonivore
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [23]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
The paper relies on this without support.
A sustainable Cloud is achievable, so that the ecological problem is a matter of will and imagination rather than an unavoidable consequence of design limits.
“The case study illustrates that the ecological dynamics we find ourselves in are not entirely a consequence of design limits, but of human practices and choices-among individuals, communities, corporations, and governments-combined with a deficit of will and imagination to bring about a sustainable Cloud.”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“Cloud computing, an integral part of machine learning and GenAI systems, had a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry in 2022; notably, a single data centre was spending as much electricity as 50,000 homes (Monserrate, 2022).”
From Higher Education's Generative Artificial Intelligence Paradox: The Meaning of Chatbot Mania (2024) · cites this paper as Monserrate, 2022
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“Cloud computing, an integral part of machine learning and GenAI systems, had a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry in 2022; notably, a single data centre was spending as much electricity as 50,000 homes (Monserrate, 2022).”
From Higher Education's Generative Artificial Intelligence Paradox: The Meaning of Chatbot Mania (2024) · cites this paper as Monserrate, 2022
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > Precipitations
“the recent Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, a consortium of European data center companies and infrastructure providers promising to become "climate neutral" by 2050”
§ The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage > References
“Peter Judge, "European Cloud Providers Pledge to Go Climate Neutral by 2030," Data Center Dynamics, January 22, 2021”
Citations
Cites
Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP
Strubell, E., Ganesh, A., & McCallum, A. (2019) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1906.02243 · Cited by 3,735
Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP
Strubell, E., Ganesh, A., & McCallum, A. (2019) · Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics · doi:10.18653/v1/p19-1355 · Cited by 3,684
Cybernetics. Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
N., E., & Wiener, N. (1949) · The Journal of Philosophy · doi:10.2307/2020260 · Cited by 3,590
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Yusoff, K. (2018) · Forerunners · doi:10.5749/9781452962054 · Cited by 2,370
The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis
Moore, J. W. (2017) · The Journal of Peasant Studies · doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036 · Cited by 1,850
How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
Jones, N. (2018) · Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-018-06610-y · Cited by 1,166
Crutzen, P. J. (2006) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/3-540-26590-2_3 · Cited by 742
Aligning artificial intelligence with climate change mitigation
Kaack, L. H., Donti, P. L., Strubell, E., Kamiya, G., Creutzig, F., & Rolnick, D. (2022) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01377-7 · Cited by 570
Starosielski, N. (2015) · Duke University Press eBooks · doi:10.1215/9780822376224 · Cited by 558
The carbon impact of artificial intelligence
Dhar, P. (2020) · Nature Machine Intelligence · doi:10.1038/s42256-020-0219-9 · Cited by 509
Research works printed but not linked: 41
- Gabrys, Jennifer. (2013). Digital Rubbish. University of Michigan Press.
- Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
- Hogan, Mél. "Big Data Ecologies." Ephemera 18, no. 3 (2018): 631-57. http://ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/contribution/18-3hogan.pdf.
- Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski, 71-93. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
- Walker, Janet, and Nicole Starosielski. Sustainable Media. New York: Routledge, 2016.
- Louise Amoore, "Cloud Geographies: Computing, Data, Sovereignty," Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 1 (2018): 4-24, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516662147; · DOI · Paper page
- Nathan Ensmenger and Rebecca Slayton, "Computing and the Environment," Information & Culture 52, no. 3 (2017): 295-303, https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2017.0011. ↩ · DOI
- Nicole Starosielski, "Thermocultures of Geological Media," Cultural Politics 12, no. 3 (2016): 293-309, https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3648858; · DOI
- Nicole Starosielski, Media Hot and Cold (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021). ↩
- Junaid Shuja et al., "Sustainable Cloud Data Centers: A Survey of Enabling Techniques and Technologies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 62 (2016): 195-214, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.04.034; · DOI
- Julia Velkova, "Data That Warms: Waste Heat, Infrastructural Convergence, and the Computation Traffic Commodity," Big Data & Society 3, no. 2 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716684144; · DOI
- Mikko Wahlroos et al., "Future Views on Waste Heat Utilization: Case of Data Centers in Northern Europe," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82 (2018): 1749-64, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.10.058. ↩ · DOI
- Tim Donaghy, Caroline Henderson, and Elizabeth Jardim, "Oil in the Cloud," Greenpeace, May 19, 2020, https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/oil-in-the-cloud/, and Canay Özden-Schilling, The Current Economy: Electricity Markets and Technoeconomics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021). ↩
- Mél Hogan, "Big Data Ecologies," Ephemera 18, no. 3 (2018): 631-57, http://ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/contribution/18-3hogan.pdf. ↩
- Nicola Jones, "How to Stop Data Centres from Gobbling Up the World's Electricity," Nature 561, no. 7722 (2018): 163-66, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586- 018-06610-y. ↩ · DOI · Paper page
- Alix Johnson, "Data Centers as Infrastructural In-Betweens: Expanding Connections and Enduring Marginalities in Iceland," American Ethnologist 46, no. 1 (2019): 75-88, https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12735; · DOI
- Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, "'Where the Internet Lives': Data Centers as Cloud Infrastructure," in Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures, ed. Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski (Champaign: University of Illinois Press), 71-93. ↩
- Burrington, "The Environmental Toll of a Netflix Binge"; Cook et al., "#ClickClean"; Jones, "How to Stop Data Centres from Gobbling Up the World's Electricity." These figures are far from comprehensive. Given that the data required to calculate the carbon emissions is often proprietary, scholars and activists can only draw upon publicly available records, documents, and data provided voluntarily by companies like Amazon and Google. Compare with the discussion in Jonathan Koomey and Eric Masanet, "Does Not Compute: Avoiding Pitfalls Assessing the Internet's Energy and Carbon Impacts," Joule 5, no. 7 (2021): 1625-28, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2021.05.007. ↩ · DOI · Paper page
- Peter Dauvergne, "Is Artificial Intelligence Greening Global Supply Chains? Exposing the Political Economy of Environmental Costs," Review of International Political Economy (2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2020.1814381; · DOI · Paper page
- Peter Dauvergne, "The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: Consequences for the Politics of Environmentalism," Globalizations 18, no. 2 (2021): 285-99, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1785670. ↩ · DOI · Paper page
- Lynn H. Kaack et al., "Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Climate Change Mitigation," preprint, submitted October 6, 2021, hal-03368037, https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-03368037. See also Payal Dhar, "The Carbon Impact of Artificial Intelligence," Nature Machine Intelligence 2 (2020): 423-25, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0219-9. ↩ · DOI · Paper page
- Hogan, "Big Data Ecologies." See also Mél Hogan, "Data Flows and Water Woes: The Utah Data Center," Big Data & Society (December 2015), https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715592429. ↩ · DOI · Paper page
- Nathan Ensmenger, "The Environmental History of Computing," Technology and Culture 59, no. 4 (2018): S7-S33, https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2018.0148. ↩ · DOI
- Renee Obringer et al., "The Overlooked Environmental Footprint of Increasing Internet Use," Resources, Conservation and Recycling 167 (2021): 105389, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105389. ↩ · DOI
- Arline L. Bronzaft and Dennis P. McCarthy, "The Effect of Elevated Train Noise on Reading Ability," Environment and Behavior 7, no. 4 (1975): 517-28, https://doi.org/10.1177/001391657500700406; · DOI
- Arline L. Bronzaft, "Impact of Noise on Health: The Divide between Policy and Science," Open Journal of Social Sciences 5, no. 5 (2017): 108-20, https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2017.55008; · DOI
- Abotutu Ahi Abel, "Urban Noise Pollution in Nigerian Cities: Imperatives for Abatement," Current Journal of Applied Science & Technology 10, no. 6 (2015): 1-9, https://doi.org/10.9734/BJAST/2015/18466; · DOI
- Malik Muhammad Anees, Muhammad Qasim, and Aroj Bashir, "Physiological and Physical Impact of Noise Pollution on Environment," Earth Science Pakistan 1, no. 1 (2017): 8-11, https://doi.org/10.26480/esp.01.2017.08. · DOI
- See also Nathaniel Lee, David Anderson, and Jessica Orwig, "Noise Pollution Is a Bigger Threat to Your Health Than You May Think, and Americans Aren't Taking It Seriously," Business Insider, January 26, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/noise-pollution-effects-human-hearing-health- quality-of-life-2018-1. ↩ · DOI
- Jennifer C. Hsieh, "Making Noise in Urban Taiwan: Decibels, the State, and Sonosociality," American Ethnologist 48, no. 1 (2021): 51-64, https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13003. ↩ · DOI
- Paul Dourish, The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017);
- Jennifer Gabrys, Digital Rubbish (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013);
- Ensmenger and Slayton, "Computing and the Environment"; Boy Lüthje and Florian Butollo, "Why the Foxconn model Does Not Die: Production Networks and Labour Relations in the IT Industry in South China," Globalizations 14, no. 2 (2017): 216-31, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2016.1203132. ↩ · DOI
- Ruha Benjamin, "Racial Fictions, Biological Facts: Expanding the Sociological Imagination through Speculative Methods," Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 2, no. 2 (2016): 1-28, on 2, https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v2i2.28798. ↩ · DOI
- Casey Fiesler, "Ethical Considerations for Research Involving (Speculative) Public Data," Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3 (December 2019), 249, https://doi.org/10.1145/3370271; · DOI
- Casey Fiesler, "Innovating Like an Optimist, Preparing Like a Pessimist: Ethical Speculation and the Legal Imagination," Colorado Technology Law Journal 19, no. 1 (2021): 1-18, https://ctlj.colorado.edu/?p=696. ↩
- Paul J. Crutzen, "The 'Anthropocene,'" in Earth System Science in the Anthropocene, ed. Eckart Ehlers and Thomas Krafft (Berlin: Springer, 2006), 13-18. ↩
- Jason W. Moore, "The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis," Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 3 (2017): 594-630, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036; · DOI
- Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016);
- McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (New York: Verso, 2015); and Kathryn Yussoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018). ↩
- Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, "Silicon Fox," Anthropology and Humanism 45, no. 1 (2020): 130-38, https://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12276. · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Higher Education's Generative Artificial Intelligence Paradox: The Meaning of Chatbot Mania
Rudolph, J., Mohamed Ismail, F. M., & Popenici, S. (2024) · Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice · doi:10.53761/54fs5e77 · Cited by 189
“Cloud computing, an integral part of machine learning and GenAI systems, had a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry in 2022; notably, a single data centre was spending as much electricity as 50,000 homes (Monserrate, 2022).”
BackgroundPlatform capitalism and cloud infrastructure: Theorizing a hyper-scalable computing regime
Narayan, D. (2022) · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · doi:10.1177/0308518x221094028 · Cited by 155
“Importantly, STS and media scholars now attend to data centers as the material base of cloud computing (e.g. Hogan 2015; Taylor 2019; Monserrate, 2022).”
BackgroundThe mechanisms of AI hype and its planetary and social costs
Markelius, A., Wright, C., Kuiper, J., Delille, N., & Kuo, Y.-T. (2024) · AI and Ethics · doi:10.1007/s43681-024-00461-2 · Cited by 117
“This infrastructure constitutes a vast network of interconnected components, encompassing human labour [52–54], substantial planetary resources [15, 51], and a complex framework of societal institutions.”
InfluentialValdivia, A. (2024) · Information Communication & Society · doi:10.1080/1369118x.2024.2420021 · Cited by 89
“As the previous case illustrates, data centres – which are considered a key aspect within the supply chains of AI – can also provoke other type of harms and resistance that are also connected to AI (Brodie & Velkova, 2021; Hogan, 2015; Lehuedé, 2022; Monserrate, 2022).”
The AI-mediated intimacy economy: a paradigm shift in digital interactions
Bozdağ, A. A. (2025) · AI & SOCIETY · doi:10.1007/s00146-024-02132-6 · Cited by 42
“The crucial role of human oversight in these systems underscores the importance of integrating environmental considerations into operational decisions to safeguard the future of technology and the environment (Monserrate 2022).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Monserrate, S. G.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Monserrate, Steven Gonzalez
- Venue
- MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing
- Publisher
- PubPub
- Published
- 2022-01-27
- Issue
- Winter 2022
- OpenAlex
- W4210572958
- Semantic Scholar
- ac4d11f3e5762aa84373f465ed807324c526161c
- Cited by
- 145
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 47 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 6.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-sa
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Green IT and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Cloud Computing and Resource Management
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Hardware and Architecture › Energy Efficiency in Computing
- Keywords
- cloud computing, data centers, CO2 emissions, climate change, thermal management, water consumption, e-waste disposal, organizational culture, Anthropocene, IT infrastructure
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