Tomorrow's World

Geothermal Data Centers

There was a time when a data centre was simply a warehouse full of humming servers and enough air conditioning to keep penguins comfortable. Those days are apparently over. The data centre of tomorrow has loftier ambitions. It no longer wants to borrow electricity from the local utility or ask politely for municipal water. Instead, it arrives complete with its own reservoir, geothermal wells, solar farm, wind turbines and enough backup generators to keep a small nation running. If the marketing brochures are to be believed, the only thing missing is a private weather system to guarantee uninterrupted sunshine. Politicians have embraced the idea with great enthusiasm, standing beside oversized ceremonial shovels to promise thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in investment and a future where prosperity magically appears because an enormous warehouse full of computers has chosen their community. Questions about where all the electricity and water will come from are quickly brushed aside with colourful artist impressions showing happy families flying kites beside endless rows of solar panels while a drilling rig quietly disappears toward the centre of the Earth in search of "renewable opportunities." Meanwhile, the economic ripple effects are becoming wonderfully absurd. Investment firms are treating data centres like the new gold rush, property developers insist farmland is far more valuable beneath server racks than potatoes, and homeowners are beginning to wonder whether drilling a geothermal well beside the barbecue might lower the monthly heating bill. Local councils are even rumoured to be considering zoning for "Residential Geothermal Lifestyle Communities," complete with complimentary hard hats and heat resistant garden sheds. If this continues, tomorrow's landscape will feature towering digital fortresses surrounded by reservoirs, forests of wind turbines and robotic maintenance crews, all carefully designed to ensure artificial intelligence never has to endure the inconvenience of a power outage or a warm processor. Future historians may conclude that humanity's greatest engineering achievement was not building intelligent machines, but building intelligent machines that insisted on owning their own water supply, power station and a direct line to the Earth's core, all while politely reminding everyone to conserve energy at home.