If you've seen the headlines — data centers as economic savior or neighborhood villain — but weren't totally sure what a data center actually is, this episode is your starting point.
Aicila sits down with John Bowman, an IT veteran with 35 years in the industry, to trace the arc from the very first data center (built in 1945 to house ENIAC, a military computer the size of a room) to the cloud infrastructure powering your phone right now.
In this episode:
The BiCurean thread: Before we can have a real conversation about what's happening now, we need to understand that data centers didn't appear with AI — they've been quietly running the world for nearly 80 years.
Next episode: AI arrives, and things get complicated.
Resources
AI and water
Not just use- also cooling and contamination
https://undark.org/2025/12/16/ai-data-centers-water/
https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/data-center-water-use/
Innovative ways to use data center energy-
World Resource
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts
Politico-
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/26/ai-data-centers-georgia-midterms-00888668
AI data Centers- Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/ai-data-centers-energy-demands/686064/
Living in Hell- data center neighbors grapple with noise, air pollution
Delivering an Open Data Center Ecosystem for AI
Server Racks / Data center
ChatGPT4 data sizes
https://seifeur.com/gpt-4-model-size/
ChatGPT Model Version History:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT#Model_versions
OpenAI revenue growth, still operating at a loss:
https://www.ainvest.com/news/openai-explosive-revenue-growth-implications-ai-ecosystem-2507/
Other AI Revenue (DO NOT SHOW ON AIR- COPYRIGHTED)
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-the-soaring-revenues-of-ai-companies-2023-2025/
Sustainable Cloud Computing companies:
https://sustainabilitymag.com/top10/top-10-sustainable-cloud-companies
The Green Grid (Industry coalition for green computing):
https://www.thegreengrid.org/
Different states pursuing laws and regulations:
https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/alerts/state-regulation-data-centers-2026-shifting-landscape
Harvard Kennedy School / Belfer Center paper on AI, Data Centers, and the U.S. Electric Grid: AWatershed Moment
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