MS-Wisconsin

If we want to live with the machine, we must understand the machine, we must not worship the machine. We must make a great many changes in the way we live with other people…We will have to realize while we may make the machines our god and sacrifice men to machines, we do not have to do so, and if we do we deserve the punishment of idolaters. — Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, 1947

Yesterday, Joe Biden was in Wisconsin promoting a new $3 billion data center Microsoft is building. Of course the archaic figure Joe is, he was proclaiming it first and foremost meant all sorts of new jobs. The one measure of value ascribed this next generation of compute technology should not be jobs. The main value is going to be getting rid of jobs. Using industrial values, the whole value of the compute industry to this point can be measured in the jobs gotten rid of, though you'd have a hard time finding any really good detailed analysis of that. Instead, you get the flippant economist reply new technologies create new jobs, not that there isn’t a little truth in that, however, starting with industrialization, if machines hadn’t been displacing and importantly enhancing the power of utilized human labor, or horse power for that matter, there'd be little measured value at all. This next generation of compute technology will displace not just physical but mental effort.

The Microsoft press release is best. It reads like something out of the Federal government:

• “This is what a big company can do to build a strong foundation for every medium, small and start-up company and non-profit everywhere.”
• “These initiatives underscore Microsoft’s commitment to equipping the workforce with the tools needed for success in an increasingly AI-driven economy.
• A strong and vibrant economy isn’t possible without a strong and vibrant community. That’s why Microsoft will invest in a series of long-term local education and youth employment programs to support the very community that is supporting us.
• Microsoft will also continue to distribute Equity Through Technology and STEAM Grant Funds to the more than 12,000 people across Racine County engaged in United Way programs.”

The last two are humorously listed under “Reinforcing the community’s central role.” The short history of compute technology has seen the destruction of the community’s central role, most recently including Amazon replacing bookstores and scores of other retail outlets, thus depleting local tax revenue, i.e. money for schools. Along with many other changes, including the internet’s complete devastation of local news, not that television hadn’t already undermined the foundation.

Best is the paragraph under “Investing in the environment:”

“Mindful that the expansion of its business must be done in a manner consistent with protecting the environment and expanding affordable energy access for everyone, Microsoft has partnered with National Grid to build a new 250 megawatt solar project in Wisconsin that will begin operating in 2027. This additional solar power means that by 2027, Microsoft will exceed 4,000 megawatts of flowing into the local grid – an amount of power equivalent to what’s needed to power more than 3 million homes. As part of this work, Microsoft and National Grid will jointly contribute $20 million over the term of the agreement to a community fund to support under-resourced communities and communities disproportionately impacted by pollution.”

What a noble company. What's missing here is exactly how much energy the data center itself will consume. Let's just say using the vulgar math of our day, “a lot.”

We have great problems with this ever accelerating mad tech race. As the President exemplifies we are using industrial values for measures, not only are these insufficient but wildly misguiding. To simplistically look at how things presently are with the idea we are going to just automate and electrify everything is nuts.

The real question, the real value, the aesthetic challenge, the politics is in how we reorganize society, “how we live with other people,” first structuring around the environment and community, then building up from there, not down from the technology.

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