• SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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      18 hours ago

      To run all sorts of cloud and internet traffic. Things like Youtube, Steam, Amazon Web Services, and so forth require a means to store, process, and transfer data. It is no different from the importance of industrial farms, warehouses, and factories. All of them are unpleasant but important, if we want a capable civilization.

      In any case, the placement of a datacenter is the sort of thing that requires proper planning. Some water tables are better suited for sustaining the existence of a datacenter, while other water sources are key to ecosystems or communities. The problems with datacenters isn’t that they are datacenters, but rather their implementation is shoddy and shortsighted.

        • jamesrandysghost@lemmy.zip
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          51 minutes ago

          You can’t have large scale modern communication without an interconnected system for computers to talk to each other. That’s all “the internet” is. So many things in the modern world require that level of information infrastructure, everything from banking to the way scientists share data to do research.

          Would humanity go extinct without it? No, of course not.

          Would there be massive systemic collapse of global trade and economies resulting in million of lives lost? Yes.

          So “the internet” is very much necessary at the moment. Now if you’re talking about social media etc when you say internet… that’s a whole different conversation.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Datacenters are necessary for all digital infrastructure, like the internet and everything on it, including Lemmy. This comment of yours is stored in a datacenter.