Dagens ord: datasmältverk

De nya datacentrum som byggs upp av Google, Microsoft och andra drar lika mycket elenergi som hela aluminiumsmältverk (som tillverkar aluminium genom elektrolys). Så varför inte kalla dem datasmältverk?

Now, however, we're talking about companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, IBM and Sun Microsystems building data smelters - a line we stole and tweaked from Horst Simon, a computer scientist at Berkeley. The costly information plants of these technology giants eat up just as much energy as, say, an aluminum smelting center, but there's no physical product that appears as a result of the consumption. Instead, the data smelters just swap around and store bits.