Fear of the Google Data Center which is planned for Putnam County was much on display at the May 26 Putnam County Commission meeting. Close to a dozen individuals, armed with information related to other data centers, confronted the commission with their concerns.

The commission has heard expressions of opposition to the data center at Buffalo at nearly every meeting since the plan became public knowledge but has refrained from taking any action.

The commission’s hesitancy to act is, in my opinion, wise. My reason is simple. The data centers of the future will house the computers of tomorrow. The cooling requirements of the quantum computers of the future will be far less than the requirements of today’s computers. The cooling requirements of today’s computers are orders of magnitude less than that needed just ten or 15 years ago.

Fear of technology is not a good reason to continue in the status quo. Technology allows a newspaper to be produced with less than two hundredths of the man-hours needed fifty years ago. Technology can and does produce new problems but any technology which does not serve the interests of its users is doomed for extinction. Fear of the future is not good reason to dwell in the caves of the past.