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Incredibly successful Irish author and poster child of the Irish Times Sally Rooney has an issue with data centres.
The Irish Times informs us that, “Author Sally Rooney wrote about the climate crisis in The Irish Times last November, warning that “if fossilfuels keep burning at present rates, we are headed for apocalyptic civilisational collapse”. The novelist is now taking the fight to her own doorstep by objecting to a proposed data centre in her native Co Mayo.
Rooney said in her submission to Mayo County Council that she was writing “as a resident of County Mayo and a concerned citizen” about plans by Mayo Data Hub Ltd for a 36mW high-capacity data facility, extending to 29,076 sq m in Killala Business Park.
“Climate change represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to our way of life here in Mayo and to the future of human life around theworld,” she wrote. Rooney said that in 2023, data centres accounted for “21 per cent of Ireland’s total electricity usage – more than all urban households combined.”
“She said permission for the Mayo facility would increase carbon emissions and create a risk of blackouts. The author also questioned if therapid growth of data centres had improved the quality of internet access in Ireland or if they were only needed to support the exponential growth of online advertising. “Advertising, needless to say, is pointless,” she wrote.
This last line, I might add, came directly above an online advertisement in my Irish Times for a holiday abroad. So advertising might be pointless to Sally Rooney, who is above such manipulation, and perhaps she has never had to once advertise any of her books online but online advertisement seems important for the Irish Times at least.
Rooney implores: “I urge you in the strongest possible terms to refuse planning permission for this wasteful, unnecessary and environmentally toxic proposal.”
Interesting. The truth is that everyone, including Sally Rooney, is now dependent on data centres as everyone is dependent on the internet anddata being held in a data centre. The clue is in the name.
Now, the greenies out there who try to live off-grid – and Sally Rooney may well be one of them – might try to fool themselves into believing that their lives to do not depend on data centres, but they do. Because their lives depend on other people, the great and beautiful human family, such as GPs storing their medical files in a cloud, or schools relying on a cloud, or private companies that supply our food, such as Dunnes, to the entire apparatus of the state, they all depend on data centres and we all depend on them. I assume Sally Rooney is not a libertarian, a rugged individualist, she does not believe that anyone is an island – Ibiza say. She must know her life depends on the skill and knowledge of others, and much of that knowledge is now stored in data centres.
On a very simple level, unless Sally Rooney writes with a quill pen and parchment or perhaps an old fashioned typewriter like your man whoended up being hobbled in the film Misery, then her career depends on a data centre. I am taking an educated guess that she writes her action packed thrillers on a computer of some kind and that the various drafts of her latest literary masterpiece is held on a cloud of some sort. I just doubt she stores drafts on her hard drive because although I have never read any of her books, they are not generally regarded as page-turners, blessed in their brevity. So she stores them in the cloud which is held in a data centre.
I did, like everybody else it seems on planet earth, enjoy Normal People during lockdown, which I watched on BBC iPlayer. I don’t think any ofus would have survived lockdown without Normal People. Goodness, what a humdinger that was. A more thoughtful and profound version of the Ross-Rachel storyline in Friends, the key difference being Rachel is not that bright whereas Marianne is super-duper smart.
I believe that Normal People and the other one I couldn’t get through, the very long and boring Conversations with Friends are still on BBC iPlayer or at least they once were and you need the internet to watch those. If you download either of those gems to any device to watch it on a plane, not that Ms Rooney flies anywhere mind you, I reckon you need a data centre somewhere along the way.
Finally, and I do hate to be difficult about this, it has come to my attention that you can purchase Ms Rooney’s books on the Amazon. I find thisinteresting as I always understood that Amazon was evil, run by the evil Jeff Bezos, and was a destroyer of books shops, highstreets and all things local, noble and humble.
I’m no tree hugger but even I try to avoid Amazon, I’d rather purchase a book at my local Waterstones. (Not that I would be purchasing any of Ms Rooney’s books because I have four children and I just don’t have time for that kind of thing.)
I also noticed that not only do you have the option of shelling out 11.85 Euros for the hardback version of Intermezzo, which in the Sunday Times review says is ‘Her most mature and moving book to date … I read it in a state of rapture” you could also pay just 2.36E for the kindle edition. (As an aside, no one has ever said that they read one of my blogs in a state of rapture which is perhaps piquing my jealousy.)
Truly, I am a traditionalist when it comes to these things and I generally buy proper books where I can physically turn the page (although not hardback, I only do that for Austen or Dickens) but plenty of other people will get the kindle edition, for the knock down price of 2.36E. You can’t even get a take away cup of coffee in one of those evil disposable cups for 2.50E anymore.
And do you know what readers of Sally Rooney need if they are to read her literary masterpieces via kindle – that’s right, data centres. I have a kindle, usually just to read the part of the book you can get for free, and it always tells me it is downloading things. I do believe they are downloading all my right-wing books, your Thomas Sowell, your Keven Williamson, your Ben Shapiros, what have you from the magical cloud in the sky, aka a data centre.
Now, I am pretty sure Sally Rooney has a kindle and although I suspect she doesn’t have any Ben Shapiro on there, I know, I just know in my bones she has Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent on there. That’s a good one that is, even I’ve read that. That will be stored in a data centre though.
And I bet she has Eric Hobsbawm and Richard Dawkins on there – don’t tell me you don’t. Honest to God if I’m wrong on any of the above I won’t threaten to do the naked thing (like walking down the street naked) but I will buy a copy of Intermezzo from Waterstones or maybe even an independent bookstore, in hardback. And what’s more I’ll read it.
Seriously, though no one likes a hypocrite, at least I don’t. And on the necessity of data centres Sally Rooney is being a hypocrite. We all need them like we need clean water or indeed like a fish needs a bicycle (she has lots of feminist books on her kindle, I know she does). Ms Rooney depends on them for her career and the people she depends on – her publicist and publishers – depend on them. Objecting to a data centre is one of the worst forms of Nimby-ism, which is a dreadful ism.
Badly done by Sally Rooney, badly done.
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Photo Credit: Chris Boland : www.chrisboland.com
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