We are an extremely data-oriented society these days, and our consumer electronics devices do not seem to plateau where internal memory is concerned. Heck, even our cloud mapping solutions have added plenty more high resolution imagery (like the recent 270TB addition to Bing Maps), and all of this virtual space will still need to be hosted in a physical manner somewhere. Facebook, the world’s most popular social network, has decided to set up their data center in the Arctic circle, where you will not find issues of the lack of water or hot weather bothering this data center.
This is definitely a novel idea, and in the long run, it would also help lower the cost to operate a data center, in addition to reducing its negative impact on the environment. I do wonder, however, what would happen if all the other Silicon Valley giants were to move their operations to the relatively untainted Arctic circle? Would the average temperature rise because of all the heat emanating from these servers, so much so that even more ice will melt and the world’s weather patterns check into an asylum? Now that is definitely a question for the ages.
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