Abstract
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve and the world becomes more reliant on the cloud, there is an evergrowing demand for more data centers to serve as the backend infastructure behind these technologies. Everything in our daily lives from health records to grocery receipts are stored online in data centers, putting pressure on the industry to keep building more. However, this continued growth is often not compatible with the human lives around data center developments due to increased noise and pollution, and many have began to oppose new developments, especially as they begin to encroach their neighborhoods. To the local governments however, data centers bring a steady and reliable stream of tax income, making it a highly popular investment for counties looking to fill a hole in their finances. This clash of interests is brought to the forefront at county board meetings, with frequent arguments between the elected officials and their constituents.
For my STS paper, I researched how the Board of Supervisors in my local county, Prince William County, balances these benefits and drawbacks of data center developments, and how the people have responded to their decisions. I found that the county’s actions are limited not just by the support of their constituents, but also how local government operates in Virginia, as their powers are constrained by their limited decision-making powers, forcing them to often depend on mitigation through negotiation and incentives rather than direct enforcement of their sustainability goals. Data center developers often play into this, framing their projects as environmentally conscious and community friendly, and with the limited capability of the board to fight against these claims, constituents against the developments often feel unheard and unrepresented. Moving forward, it is important for local governments to make sure that the local communities near data centers feel its positive impacts, as it is often these communities that bear the brunt of the physical costs of data center development. Without further investment and policy changes for these communities, the expansion of the cloud risks reinforcing current power imbalances, embedding inequality deeper into infrastructure that works as the very backbone of our digital age.
For my Capstone, I created a Realistic Parking Mod for a city builder video game that I enjoy called Cities: Skylines II. In the game, simulated residents drive from one building to another, following commuting and shopping patterns to simulate real-world behavior. To drive, they must find a parking spot to park at nearby their destination, and in the base game, the code logic behind this behavior was not implemented well and resulted in unrealistic and inefficient traffic behavior. To fix this, I integrated additional logic into the base game that simulates induced demand for parking, making it a more enjoyable and responsive experience for players. I uploaded it to the game’s official modding platform, where it has reached popularity with over 150,000 current users. Through the project, I experienced the entire software development lifecycle from ideation to maintenance, and it taught me valuable lessons on how to incorporate user feedback into actual implementations.
While these projects aren’t directly related, the mod that I created is hosted on the cloud, meaning that it is currently being stored in a data centers across the world, adding to the evergrowing demand. Though often not direct players, software engineers also play a part in how data centers are used, as they are the ones developing the code to be ran in them. Continuing my career in the cloud space, it’s important for me to keep in mind the real-world impact that my work is making, as while it’s easy to just assume that everything we are making is just digital in the “cloud”, it is always leaving its mark physically on the world as well.
