Off Center

I drove past my first Data Center, and I’ve been completely off-center ever since.

I read news stories, but I never actually experienced a massive Data Center in person. It’s bigger than my eyes could comprehend. The only way to see all of it was to keep driving.

Data Centers are huge structures, sometimes miles long and miles wide with no windows and no outward signs of life. It’s not a cloud. It’s an impersonal place to store my online face.

My pictures.

My messages.

My memories.

The sum total of all my keystrokes are stored for incomprehensible reasons and immeasurable seasons. My voice is stored without my choice.

A Data Center is the face of AI. This AI brain center watches, records, and stores everything now. This is what auto-corrects me. This is what puts tiny red dots under my words when the system deems them problematic. This is what insists I say “ensure” when I want to say “be sure.”

This is where part of me is stored forever. And, it makes me wonder:

What actually needs to last?

My mailbox of missed messages? My sad spreadsheets? My dull docs?

It frightens me to think that nothing in a Data Center is ever deleted. Not everything is meant to be saved. My clicks and scrolls are not solely how I roll. My notes are not all noteworthy.

My mind already holds onto things I’d rather forget. The thought of a Data Center doing the same has me completely off-balance.

Not all of my all my half-baked ideas are meant to be kept. Not all of my meaningful moments are meant to be publicly preserved.

What actually needs to last?

Thoughts of that Data Center still have me off-center. It keeps me wondering and asking:

What do you want your lasting presence to be?