“Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers.” Matteo Wong visits some of the places being transformed by new AI data centers. In many ways, these are the new strip mines by which urban centers extract value from colonial territories: “Even conservative analyses forecast that the tech industry will drop the equivalent of roughly 40 Seattles onto America’s grid within a decade; aggressive scenarios predict more than 60 in half that time. According to Siddharth Singh, an energy-investment analyst at the International Energy Agency, by 2030, U.S. data centers will consume more electricity than all of the country’s heavy industries—more than the cement, steel, chemical, car, and other industrial facilities put together. Roughly half of that demand will come from data centers equipped for the particular needs of generative AI—programs, such as ChatGPT, that can produce text and images, solve complex math problems, and perhaps one day inform scientific discoveries.”
“‘Death, Thou Shalt Die.’” Benjamin Myers reviews Jane Clark Scharl’s ambitious new play: “Like Scharl’s previous play, The Death of Rabelais is a mystery. It is not a regular “whodunnit,” however, but rather a cosmic mystery. The play’s dramatic force comes from its great ambition, its willingness to pose a question no smaller than this: What is life, and what is death?”
“A Heroic Little Sparrow Shines Brightly in the Dark World of Children’s Literature.” Auguste Meyrat praises Paul Krause’s new children’s book that traces the adventures of a suburban sparrow: “Although Krause takes care to keep the characters and plot relatively clear and simple, he still incorporates many important themes, motifs, and arguments in his story, almost all of which cut against today’s conventional wisdom. First and foremost, the trials of Passer and his friends are meant to illustrate the necessity of virtue. Each character radiates a kind of goodness that allows for the continuance of individual and communal life. They all take responsibility for each other, contributing in their own way, and remaining hopeful in success and accepting of risk.”
“Robots are Ruining Baseball.” For opening day, Bill Kauffman laments MLB and praises the unauthorized games that might still happen in small towns around the country this summer: “FanDuel and DraftKings ads spice the early spring airwaves, robots deliver their unimpeachable verdicts on human actions and a family of four shells out 500 bucks for parking and tickets to attend a game. Major League Baseball has returned!”
“The Long Farewell to Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse.” It’s been a rough week for those committed to Wendell Berry’s Terrapin Theory of Technology: “The machine is coming. If you are small and in the way, you must lie down and be run over.” As Berry points out, “So high a level of mental activity is readily achieved by terrapins.” First, Eli Tan and Mike Isaac report that Zuckerberg is taking the $80 billion loss and pivoting away from the metaverse. Then, Cade Metz reports that OpenAI is shutting down Sora, it’s video-generation platform.
“‘I Study at an Exclusive US College. We can’t Drink, Use Wi-fi or Leave During Term.’” Ruby LaRocca describes life at Deep Springs College: “it saddens me that the kind of contemplative space nurtured at Deep Springs is vanishing. People my age who get pleasure from books, their friends and their own brains are becoming harder to find. I know I’ve been lucky to have the education people used to enjoy back before the internet existed. I have developed the skills of conversation, close reading, good writing, manual competence, practical judgment — all once ubiquitous, now frighteningly rare.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)
“Low-Tech Parenting Must Be a Big Tent.” Brad East argues we should make and defend judgments about the technologies we allow in our homes but not be judgmental about the prudential decisions other families make: “let’s extend generosity to friends, family, and neighbors who come to different decisions than we do. Let’s be tech fallibilists, allowing for the possibility that our own approach might be wrong or, at a minimum, not the universal answer for all people without exception. And even if we have good reason to believe that our policy is best—or better than another’s—that doesn’t release us from the obligation to continue seeing, treating, and speaking of others with charity, warmth, mercy, and grace.”
“What’s the Point of Education in an Age of AI?” Carrie McKean responds thoughtfully to the bleak landscape facing students today: there’s “an increasingly inescapable new cultural message: Artificial intelligence will soon do everything you do, and it’ll do it faster and better than you ever could. That message is difficult enough to challenge if you’re an adult. Imagine hearing it when you’re 15 and bored in class, fully aware that you can answer any question your teacher asks in milliseconds using Google Gemini on your school-district-issued Chromebook. Why not outsource your thinking to a machine? It’s easy, frictionless, and—it seems—inevitable in this brave new world. . . . American teenagers are getting a crash course in nihilism, and their apathy is a rational response to a demoralizing situation.”
“Leaving Home to Save It.” Michael Toscano wrestles with the reality that some people must endanger their enjoyment of local goods in order to make a public defense of these goods: “We cannot allow the desire to perfect the home to morph into a desire to retreat into the home. Like the old tales show, we must leave the home and fight for it in order to truly win it. The war for the home against technological power is happening on two fronts: behind closed doors and on Capitol Hill itself.” (Recommended by Matt Stewart.)
“In the Big Bend Region, Border Wall Construction Comes for Private Lands.” Sasha von Oldershausen reports on plans to build a wall through the area near Big Bend National Park: “Now that same stretch of wetland is lined with razor-sharp concertina wire—a stark metallic barrier against a breathtaking natural backdrop. Presidio landowner Terry Bishop said it appeared on his property within the past month, around the same time landowners up and down the river began to receive communications from CBP of a planned border wall. Residents of the Big Bend border communities were stunned. Migrant traffic in the region had been at a historic low. One resident called the proposed wall a ‘solution looking for a problem.’”
“The Garden and the Liturgy.” Gracy Olmstead reviews Matt Miller’s collection of essays and ponders the moral fruit of gardening: “For Miller, both liturgy and garden serve as memento mori—an admonition to remember one’s death, to embrace both contemplation and humility among the everyday cadences of work. While the garden ‘doesn’t kill us,’ he reflects, it does remind us ‘that we will die.’ Amid the pains of the Covid pandemic, he adds, ‘the work of the Lenten garden is to find out how that recognition is not a curse, but good news.’”
