@Moss @farfalk @cwebber ok one more: all just my )US based) take on it from my involvement in networking tech since the late 1980s and seeing the various economic instabilities as a worker during that same time.

@Moss @farfalk @cwebber As far as I know we never had global networking without small data centers post 1990, and even then you had phone company premises. You need interconnect and buildings are cheaper than say satellites. And the data centers my VMs run in are probably more resource efficient than when they were in my basement. The problem isn't "data centers" but "investors have the unopposed power to waste trillions and ruin things for the multitudes due to too much unregulated money." /2

@Moss @farfalk @cwebber I certainly don't think we need new data centers but my mastodon stuff and email and backups are all on VMs in data centers. The LLM devs could do the GenAI/LLM on a nice small experimental development scale of the new capabilities without building so much because they have been given trillions and have to spend it. The greed and need to spend distort the whole process. Like all the dark fiber around 2000 or Cisco stock price. 1/2

@Moss @farfalk @cwebber sorry I can't quite understand your point. I am sure you use the internet for distributed software; data centers per se allow networking. Having products controlled by monopolistic rent seeking companies that haven't a better business plan than ads is a political problem, not so different from rail roads/oil distribution; political solutions will work when we focus on democratic power not individual purity. Bubbles happen when $ is unregulated by work/life/democracy.