The Evolution of Data Centers
Tracing the centralization of data infrastructure back to the source
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on. - Mark Zuckerberg, 2012
Data centers trace their roots back to the 1940s, a time where the world's first programmable computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was the pinnacle of computational technology. It was designed by the U.S. army to calculate artillery fire during the Second World War, and was even used by mathematicians and scientists on the Manhattan Project to develop the first thermonuclear bomb, which would eventually be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
This new technology held great potential, especially in the defense sector. U.S. President Harry S. Truman had ENIAC centers built at military installations. In 1947, he assigned engineers and researchers from the newly-founded Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assist in the development and innovation of ENIAC technology at the dawn of the Cold War.
Early data centers were incredibly complex. With their primary intention geared towards intelligence and military functions, secrecy was very important. Most data centers only had one secure door and no windows. Huge (and expensive) vents and fans were needed for cooling, and hundreds of feet of wiring and vacuum tubes to connect all of the components. Data centers were still primitive. Wires often overheated and failed, overheating could even lead to fires.
[After 1916] AT&T, it seemed, had powers to rival the gods: 'Perhaps never before in the history of civilization,' opinioned National Geographic, had 'there been such an impressive illustration of the development and power of the human mind over mundane matter (Wu, 5).
If only Theodore Vail could have seen IBM in its early days...
A map of early ENIAC data centers.
- The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York
- The Pentagon in Washington D.C.
- The Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia
- An army research installation in Aberdeen, Maryland
The first ENIAC data center was developed in secret by engineers at the University of Pennsylvania. Innovations in technology through the 1940s and into the 1950s added several locations
Description of the first ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, computational technology skyrocketed. In the early 1960s, International Business Machines (IBM) released their first transistorized computer called TRADIC. This new model helped data centers branch out from the military sphere to the commercial, eliminating the need for sophisticated vacuum tube systems. The TRADIC also exponentially increased computational abilities and features. It also made computer systems smaller and easier to fit into multipurpose spaces like office buildings. These systems enabled NASA to put astronauts on the Moon.
Rapid innovation and developments through the 1960s and 1970s, coupled with a massive proliferation of technology and computer companies such as IBM, Intel Xerox and Sun Microsystems heralded the arrival of personal computing in the 1980s. Information technology started to become a huge economic contributor around the world and had boomed at an unprecedented scale.
UNIX set the standard for personal computing and was the dawn of data-driven technology. It depended on a "client-server" model in which many computers, some personal, some commercial, connected over the newly-developed Internet to a host server. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, users began to interface with servers located in data centers around the world using the Internet, laying the groundwork for the modern data center.
In this case, much of the capital invested [during the dot-com boom] was lost, but also much of it was invested in a very high throughput backbone for the Internet, and lots of software that works, and databases and server structure. All that stuff has allowed what we have today, which has changed all our lives... that's what all this speculative mania built. - Fred Wilson, 2015
Dozens of considerations go into locating a data center, but they almost all come down to making it as cheap as possible to keep a hard drive - much less 150,000 of them - spinning and cool (Blum 232).
Brianna McCollough, Infrastructure Engineer @ Google
The dot-com era was a wholesale reshuffling of world economies brought on the by rise of the modern internet. Consequently, it also marked the boom of the data center worldwide. The data center became critical for national security, internet infrastructure and economic output. Even when the dot-com bubble burst and left massive economic strife in its wake, the data center boom has persisted ever since. Engineers around the world devoted themselves to crafting data centers perfectly.
Companies needed fast internet connectivity and nonstop operation at an unprecedented scale. Establishing such expensive data centers and Internet infrastructure was not viable for a lot of small companies, so multinational corporations like Amazon and Google began to develop vast data centers which provide companies with an array of services and technological solutions. Proliferation at a massive scale followed into the 2000s and 2010s.
These new data centers brought thousands of jobs and required significant upgrades to local power grids. While many were keen to snatch up the chance for higher wages and improved local infrastructure, there is also a great deal of controversy surrounding these new, town-sized data centers. Environmental hazards and damage, gentrification and labor monopolization in small communities quickly followed.
Data centers are also becoming synonymous with surveillance. They allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on innocent American citizens, leading to the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013. Mass surveillance persists to this day, constantly profiling Americans based on their online persona, even after former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper committed felony level perjury under oath testifying at the United States Senate. He was largely commended and awarded by the Bush and Obama administrations, two of the most secretive presidential administrations in U.S. history. Clapper now serves as a top national security analyst at CNN, disseminating daily news to millions.
Data Center Project Map
The Internet increasingly defines global socioeconomic landscapes. Take this map I created, which includes green pins as Google's U.S. data centers, green tacks as Google's International data centers, and the colors representing Internet users per 100 people. The darker the blue, the stronger the connection. With so many data centers placed in the developed world, usage is far higher than continents like Africa, which host zero current Google data centers. Data centers have become synonymous with economic development.
Today, data centers are enigmas to most people. Locked away in secure locations around the globe, they ensure the operation of the Internet and the data of billions of people. While large companies like Facebook and Google have begun holding "public tours" of their facilities, many of the inner-workings of these highly advanced technological centers remain a mystery. Like the secretive beginnings of data centers after the Second World War, data centers remain largely shrouded and hidden away from the public to this day. With current controversies surrounding big tech monopolies, cyberwarfare, illegal mass surveillance and data mining, are data centers and the Internet becoming Generation Z's battlefield?
*All images were from Google Creative Commons, videos from YouTube
Citations:
Cynthia Harvey (July 10, 2017). "Data Center" . Datamation.
Andrew Blum (course reading)
Tim Wu (course reading)
