Recent Experiments with the Creation of Subsea Saltwater Data Centers in the Pacific Ocean

• In Event: Data Centers and Disposability

Abstract

This presentation looks at current research and development efforts happening around the creation of subsea data centers, with a focus on recent data center energy and waste mitigation experiments in the Pacific Ocean. Such experiments (e.g. Microsoft’s Project Natick) aim to reduce data center construction times and to better integrate recycled materials into future data center forms. Such experiments also aim to identify new techniques, material processes, and solution sets for maximizing data center efficiency by harnessing the cooling effects of the surrounding ocean and renewable energy sources, such as winds and tides. This presentation critically approaches subsea data center development and experimentation in the Pacific Ocean as part of the longer history of science, technology, and the sea. The presentation also situates these efforts within the unique social and environmental history of Oceania and Polynesia. Enduring patterns of colonialism and a multitude of microclimates (e.g. marine, rain forest, desert, volcanic) make efforts to build and maintain resilient data infrastructures especially difficult in the island nations of the Pacific Ocean. Will those who live in the island nations of the Pacific Ocean come to benefit from the recent experiments to create subsea data centers by Microsoft and others? This presentation considers the tensions that have arisen in these subsea experiments between the durable and the permanent, between the global and the local, and between the corporate and the community, especially as these island nations increasingly face the devastating impacts of climate change.

Author

• Tonia Sutherland, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa