I Went to the Woods: Online streaming feeds need for data centers

Published 4:30 am Saturday, October 17, 2026

Data centers are a thing in the distance. It’s “the cloud” for most of us who haven’t seen where our cloud is stored.

We haven’t driven through the hills or desert to see where our scrolling history, or our 3,457 images, 327 podcasts and curated social media slop ready to be delivered are stored when our phone or laptop are full.

My podcasts, photos, e-books, documents, etc. are all backed up in my little section of a data center. I have no clue how big, but that’s the reality. I contribute to the creation of data centers by streaming movies and shows on Netflix in addition to all other use of devices that aren’t self contained. I don’t play CDs, I don’t have a VCR. My technology use also contributes to the need for precious minerals to make my cell phone work, operate Google docs, conduct research, run my computer, record and post podcasts, and store it all for future consumption.

I’m not against breakthroughs that make life better and enhance education and creativity. But I can’t honestly say that all of my online use is productive.

Scrolling on Instagram uses 100-200 megabytes per hour, depending on what I watch. Whatever I see when scrolling is fetched from a data center. Slop. The ads that run with the slop live in data centers. The enormous amount of useless, if not harmful, nonsense is helping to drive the proliferation of data centers.

There’s also entertainment. Streaming a movie in 4k uses 14-20gb of data and if I stream a movie more than once, fresh data is needed. So an afternoon or evening binge on Netflix can put my use at 60 gigabytes.

For context, depending on your connection, it would have taken you between 5 days (early broadband) and 100 days (dial-up) to download 60 gigabytes of music from Napster in the early 2000s.

This is part awesome, but mostly foreboding. Our appetite for entertainment over enrichment was bad, but with the training and use of AI, our technological trajectory is frightening.

But don’t mistake people arguing against data centers as misguided moralists who want China to win the AI war and the American economy to sink.

The argument is more nuanced.

I don’t want Bristol Bay ruined and fugitive dust to coat the edges of the Ambler Road in order to build data centers at the headwaters of legendary trout rivers just so we can see AI-generated videos that provide nothing more than a forgettable chuckle. Or worse, partisan propaganda.

Social ramifications and materials are just two elements of this uncertain future. Data centers require space, and enormous amounts of energy to keep the servers cool.

Alaska has plenty of land, but the principle of allowing the federal government or private companies to use public land as they see fit without the input of the general public, or in direct contradiction, is not the type of freedom and accountability enshrined in the Constitution.

As for energy and cooling, this is an opportunity for problem solvers to shine.

An underwater data center in Cook Inlet makes sense from a cooling perspective, but seems like an enormous risk to the ecosystem. Especially when salmon returns have been trending downward everywhere except for Bristol Bay sockeye. Though sockeye are returning, they are smaller.

Data centers have a place in our future, especially as AI training and use drives demand for materials and infrastructure. But it will come with a cost. Technological advances are always marketed as progress, something that will make life better. For who and at what cost?

Jeff Lund is a freelance writer based in Ketchikan. His book, “A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska,” is available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. “I Went to the Woods” appears twice per month in the Juneau Empire.