Datacenter, the hidden face of the web

my name is Rebecca I weigh three and a half kilos and measure 54 centimeters I'm a newborn babe behind the screens my digital double is also being born in terms of bytes Rebecca is spelled zero one zero one zero zero one zero zero one one I now have two identities one real one virtual [Music] internet for my dad it's now a matter of course he takes a photo writes a mail clicks and it's gone just like magic but how does the information travel in order to exist does the virtual me need infrastructures and energy and what if all that had an impact on our planet [Music] once upon a time there was email my dad writes about 50 a day but what does he know of the digital world and the long journey his words make between two clicks of the mouse the truth about Internet is elsewhere it's hidden between our sidewalks submerged in our rivers buried in the seabed the information routes are full of damp and dust I donate a piranha Pokemon concept review Aaron Pardo cyberspace tl crow shows keep our a rainy blood high flu NASA territory Nava structured arezzo in a fast tutorial or say the meaning of the kilometric we the million the killer met the fatigue from one computer to another digital data travels an average of 15,000 kilometers at the speed of light in milliseconds it passes through an unbelievable maze of IT infrastructures across the planet my email leaves my computer and goes into my box from there it goes downstairs and joins the other emails in the neighborhood on the sidewalk before heading to the internet switching center the first point on the network this building is the gateway to the Internet [Music] here my email switches for my private cable to national and international tables a bit like leaving a country road for the highway [Music] from this point it starts to seem like a round-the-world trip the data can take thousands of different routes via Japan or the UK for example on its long journey it's directed by routers the network signalling boxes first stop the USA at the host of email service provider in my case Gmail but it could be hotmail or yahoo in this Factory known as a data center my email is treated stocked and finally redirected because still at the speed of light it does the whole journey in Reverse right into the addresses inbox sending an email isn't as magical as it seems behind all the appearances there's a big bill to pay that of the energy needed to keep internet working and that hasn't escaped the attention of Adam the agency for the environment and energy control has calculated the energy cost of all we do digitally Louis because momentum catechin in case you want to see a pair for the nanochip at all you know pretty bad conservation on the focus on some key function upon all phenomena don't see by Norma may come Emma Cerebus a problem this is a turn on the merits - huh - David shall we so funny I don't mean here so sending an email with an attachment needs 24 watts per hour a lightbulb burning for an hour without an attachment it's on average 5 watts per hour following but every hour 10 billion emails are sent hard to calculate the total let's look at some equivalences 10 billion emails at an average of 50 Giga watts per hour equivalent to the electricity production of 15 nuclear power plants for 1 hour or if you prefer 4000 tons of oil 4,000 Paris New York round trips by playing [Music] all that for an hour of swapping emails on the web and that's not including what else we can do on the web to keep Google alone running it takes as much electricity as for the whole city of Bordeaux what is the population of Paris France this happened in a fraction of a second and it happens billions of times every day so there's a lot of work going on inside the data centers to make that happen for you spread throughout the world data centers have become the strategic temples of our digital economy [Music] they are ultra sensitive places as the digital data of all of us is treated there from the outside nothing distinguishes them from a standard hangar except perhaps the surveillance cameras that keep the curious at bay but behind these bland facades data centers consume phenomenal amounts of electricity these internet factories run day and night with no interruption inside tens of thousands of computers treat financial transactions calculate our taxes and sort our photos places like these have the Internet's greatest energy needs a data center see result tipo de de de da da confetti a Tunisian numeric in Ramallah formation in a transform a horn a formation like a pasty on one of the video the Parc de Santana divisional in at the fairness of servility swap collective ownership listen opelu look devoted leadership is all depended principles is a is a so Kepler who focus our original dose at Manila development of your own container does it's a gap you just intend obey a on a capsule can sow yep these are merely the day or two more the visitor you've surely already noticed when you work with a laptop on your knees it gets hot now imagine the heat produced by these tens of thousands of machines stacked up side-by-side okay to be new technology able to see some limited SEO the van der Meyde people called besides I don't ability to stop the computers overheating there is around the clock air conditioning these massive cooling systems account for 40% of a data centers electricity bill develop jamal of 1410 the second sama a new user for the is that now a data center is made up of computers connected to a network with one a flow of digital data and to a flow of electric current the computers jobs because they do work produce heat so there needs to be a third flow of cold air to keep them cool this combination is extremely energy consuming in a single day one data center alone consumes as much energy as 30,000 citizens electricity is what fuels the Internet but it's also its Achilles heel [Music] in data centers there is one haunting fear losing digital data listen the key on Dominica's consume ask this a pack saw on new media new comedy VAR a citrus vanilla see physique mall laureate on the table she had predate ECT ask in power Freddy Venetta Wilson Lenovo disposability kieta Tallulah party datacenter it equivalent des armées Sulu cannot Oh door mirrors Patel we'd only transpire on support Appa every demo Chen fu su casa ABI unsupported Asami can data center sukashi to avoid a digital crash all equipment is doubled or sometimes tripled if one machine were to go down another would then take over some might call it paranoia or even wastage but here it's prosaically named redundancy [Music] security will appear say telepathy distribution energy so coordination production distribution for to Samoa rudovika security Paco up Chanel Iman national news were fragile dogs admin Buchan William a similar concern to the linearly related party duties also the exhibition's piramide de belliere authority a decision of a lifetime hello Malaya on the bed no redundancy means an even bigger energy burden electricity for backup is provided by generators their 3,000 horsepower motors are capable of propelling a sea cruiser here there are 10 of them ready to spark up at a quarter turn [Music] it's in these huge factories that my digital identity is hosted I must admit it's a strange cradle for a baby a digital cradle I'm now one month old and I've gained a kilo in weight as for my digital double its tending to grow a little faster than I am [Music] so calculative and Erica yes eye socket right let me get photo yeah cats on honk ah I get some care haunts me go for a few ha yeah I cannot Miguel the police music hello have you done a Padilla survived it was cavatelli prison prove it this is Curacao VD the multiplet Erica Kumar to teach worried in due to advances set with nerves in the foot of Jessica I'm very anxious marginal to do my baby I don't know the rest Jonah did not authorize the volume of data in circulation doubles every two years it's what's known as big data today in one minute a hundred hours of videos are posted on YouTube two million searches made on Google and six hundred eighty thousand messages posted on Facebook remember one hour of emailing consumers the equivalent of 4,000 round trips from Paris to New York by playing so tomorrow what will be the Internet's energy cost [Music] the bites are piling up and it's in part due to the fact that anything can now be digitalized Vasili lukitch haunted ET blanc all the minidisc the Davidians who it is it equal voice is kana Padonia co-champion it we not honor humanity by but i probably pick on atom energy felicity give you quick one my folks don't listen to CDs anymore they have playlists they don't receive letters only emails but because of storing all this data their hard disks are full so Apple Spotify and Google now offer to store our data for us in a new cyber space they've given it a cute name the cloud a poetic name nice and fluffy and somewhat dreamy [Music] but basically it just means our data is stored in their data centers [Music] everything is supposedly virtual and we don't even have our own files in our homes the people that were the positive in Neiman's say they take DVD take dr. Hawkins actually and in university music back to our dominance no investment free service in doing the piece with the on Yahoo the prism privilege which is at LSU deserter anta's rocks affair Madonna volume explained on scandal Sonya sue protection prison prisoner plans yet we don't replace a signatory said graduated the linear encoder he said the material is a no SEPA dematerialization material is don't under the song data centers which I built fast and which require even more energy the northern suburbs of Paris over ve a Ponte liqueur nerve Santini these districts have traditionally been the stage of industrial revolutions they were home to polluting glass steel then chemical factories history is now repeating itself the northeast of Paris today has a majority of data centers built in France [Music] Oberlin a has become the showcase for this digital revolution we figured obeah VIX revealed a data center salfi unofficial politic Mala Mala guapa donkey pass complete moines a person a Deku Valkenburgh I didn't see was blood for service Kia the suburbs have everything to gain in 2011 data centers brought in 1. 5 million euros in professional tax to over Vanier and sandini they have also enabled them to rejuvenate old abandoned industrial land now alexandra chip the registry the bathtub led to a deposit reproduce the element no completely reversing the components of executed could really go for almost a century this copper cutting factory was the pride of the first French Industrial Revolution it employed hundreds of workers tomorrow the boats will be replaced by a material data managed by a mere dozen employees avakov is pretty busy I evaluate a value lowest value has a la place de selva constrain grommets more most populations in the region Parisien the vacuum to to New York sungai ujong will economy topple media as a gossiper the free material the dune is an economy we should read economic reports OWA dreams of becoming a digital makeup artists like Shanghai or London but the deployment of these digital factories is beginning to weigh on the suburbs electricity grid Oh knowledge even on the population Dobie RVD a consummation electric consume a unique vantage datacenter akhaten Lisa for Samos a pleasure no disco madness and an opposite pad problem soft wisdom or lake on me numeric Wausau la the f-commerce idea it's a come on Sasha finally to you distributing electricity requires infrastructures with the development of data centers in the Paris region the infrastructures here needs several million euros of investment the data center phone in the frostings and a room don't say a prayer usually see that the center concern do some bigger what skill equivalent univille the disinhibitor cosmic ocean at work at home cement data center the consumer doula play assumes project don't his own design do zone on the river of work because the Moy miracles no part of sank the center on then there is nothing really virtual about our mouse clicks this energy requirement could have an impact on our planet in France nuclear power supplies our greedy data centers an energy that's supposedly clean and inexpensive [Music] in the u.

s. home of the pioneers of digital it's a very different story America hosts the majority of the world's data centers they're a frenetic race for energy has begun since 2007 the big players have been invading the North Carolina fields this is Facebook a few miles away is Apple a little farther home of another web giant Google the data centers of three alone use five percent of North Carolina's electricity in search of the Internet here we are in North Carolina we're getting close I almost begin to hear the servers running Gary cook is a Greenpeace activist specializing in climate change but instead of observing the melting of glaciers gary is closely monitoring the increase in data centers and their impact on the environment that's big best viewpoint we can find and that's where a big piece of the internet is running right behind us we have been focused on IT companies because for a number of reasons for data centers like these here they're drawing a lot of they're the source of a lot of new demand for energy [Applause] state economic development has been actively involved in recruiting data centers to the state they don't peek at certain times of the day it's really just 24/7 they operate on pretty much at a constant load so for their size they place a you know pretty significant demand on the system and so they would be primarily served out of base load plants which in North Carolina or nuclear and coal plants coal who'd have imagined that this old fossil fuel a hangover from the 19th century would be fueling our internet surfing that our Facebook posts and emails would be emitting thick black smoke the internet you think of you don't think of coal not the first thing you think of but unfortunately many places the internet is being powered by coal where the cloud touches the ground is places just like this [Music] this plant is a really old old-school coal plant one of the larger coal plants on the u. s.

East Coast and this is a it's plant predates the Internet built in the you know almost 50 years ago in the 60s some of the companies who came down here in North Carolina were attracted by the the idea of you know it was thinking short term not the cost of energy where where other people are paying studies have estimated that this facility is responsible for it but it's pollution is 130 deaths a year and over 2000 cases of asthma as it burns coal emits 50 times more co2 than other fossil fuels its ashes form toxic deposits that contaminate the soil and the rivers coal is the the biggest source of global wind coalition in the u. s. it's you know in terms of a fuel it's what the power plant sector that's what's driving our global warming contribution with its eleven coal-fueled power plans North Carolina is one of the biggest contributors to American climate deregulation and yet it's this fuel that is drawing in the web's biggest players on the map the equation becomes more apparent the numerous power plants have attracted data centers to the region but the energy providers need raw material cold which is mined in huge quantities farther north [Applause] [Music] the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia Breeze in rust and dust it's the second biggest coal reserve in the USA twelve percent of the country's coal is mined there the history of coal and the Appalachians started well in the late 19th century mines and steel works were the pride of the region and made its fortune thousands of laborers worked there and lived in towns named after their bosses arrives here in 1967 when I was old and it was the perfect place for a child to grow up the water quality was still pretty good there was people had built swimming holes up in the mountains but down the years underground mines were closed coal was extracted from open-face mines which employed fewer workers the fossil fuel became a source of desolation and pollution for the area my grandfather was coal miner I mean he did underground mining it was a hard hard work but it didn't destroy us a friend of mine said when is the last time you've been up on the mountain and I said probably thirty years ago and she said well you need to go and I'm like why she says you need to go we drove up on the mountain and I told my husband at the time I said get me out of here before I vomit because the entire face of the mountain was just obliterated it was just gone I had no clue what had happened I I was just in shock [Music] to make up for the insufficient yield of coal from underground mines explosives clear a path for bulldozers which bleed the land on the surface happened Jim had warned us the mountain has been ravaged from the summit down but the scars aren't visible from the valleys [Music] the next the valleys are being pillaged first the trees are felled then the mountain is dynamited before being decapitated the process is radical as are the effects on the environment [Music] [Applause] [Music] never exist again the rest of the country has sort of heard their I turned away from the problems that you're here so we can get electricity it's as if nature had died mining releases the toxic residues built up in the coal over millions of years as for the explosives they leave behind traces of mercury iron aluminum and cadmium which contaminates streams and rivers killing fish that's the real price to pay for cheap electricity that's the dark side to our emails [Music] ten years after mining stopped on this mountain despite the efforts of specialists nothing is growing back they have sprayed hydro seat on it Hydra seed is a substance it'll grow pretty much anywhere will grow on a wall and then it dies and then they let it alone they have planted some trees way up there but most of those trees are dying don't think that they will ever be able to properly reclaim that to the ecosystem that was there before but the digital revolution marches on with its ever greater energy demands I don't think anybody likes to see the tops blown off of mountains in West Virginia but unfortunately I think that's been a cheaper way to get at the coal from our standpoint we won't we want to give the lowest cost to the consumer will our emails end up destroying the Appalachians [Music] in the heart of the mountains some American students are trying to solve the dilemma hi guys I'm Nathan Jenkins with Appalachian Voices and I'm here today to present to you guys about the coalfields expressway who use an Apple Macintosh a new conscience blending ecology and technology is perhaps emerging we're gonna do a calling day we're looking at a rally to really gently keep pressuring federal highways there are other ways to create electricity and this is you know wind turbines on top of mountain is it worth it for that to operate while we're we're killing people you know killing future generations we're destroying the habitats that we have in the water that we have it only takes time I can't stand by and just watch you know corporations and you know private interests just do whatever they want in the u.

s. it is such an abundant energy resource u. s.

is very interested in being energy independent not having to rely on other countries so if it's very difficult to imagine a future in which we don't use coal at all if we don't change wherever however using in generating energy we are locked into a rapidly changing comment that it's even hard to imagine how much change we're looking at we're already seeing it now with the loss of the polar ice caps loss of habitat forest fires extreme weather but that is you know we're just at the front end of that this country needs a revolution and we need one bad we can't get there without the IT sector because what we need is rather than just sort of sitting on the sidelines and cheerleading's I guess we can be part of the solution we need you to get down the field and start getting into the game new technologies consume energy they also allow men and women to swap ideas the ball is surely in the big web players Court will they be able to put their technologies to the service of savings on energy their realm is Silicon Valley in California on the west coast the original home of the pioneers the Vanguard the inventors of IT geeks who managed to put the whole wide world into a microprocessor geniuses and glasses started by assembling computers in their garages then they established a first connection between two machines at Stanford University and the precursor of Internet was born after that everything moved at lightning speed Google was founded in 1998 than Facebook in 2004 we're an Internet company we are here to make the lives of our users easier it's all about just giving users the best kind of information they need when they need it and to do it without them having to work too hard gorgeous weather oh my gosh located 3,500 kilometers from its coal devouring data center Google HQ is almost a dream for ecologists we serve organic healthy food mostly locally grown locally sourced if they eat well at work hopefully they'll eat well at home because this is gonna be the kind of norm for them and because we have the green grocer program which encourages people to take home the messages Googlers as they're known don't always work at their desks eat organic foods ride bicycles or drive electric vehicles [Music] Silicon Valley has changed the way we live the way we work the way we play and it's definitely made my life a lot easier are these companies which proclaim their green values still seeing through their revolutionary ambitions or have their bosses become businessmen like so many others every year the bigwigs of the IT sector meet to discuss their energy consumption naturally gary cook invites himself along to the forum where collaborative efforts we can work together as we advance energy efficiency well lookie there anytime that you go on to ebay and you're making a purchase you're using a data center so how is it that you can increase the utilization of your assets and then reduce your energy consumption is really what we're all about so as the green grid pulls together traditional electrical i.