Last night, we gathered around the Long Table for a conversation called Understanding the Data Center Dilemma.

If we had to sum up our vision at LightHouse/LightWorks in one sentence, it would be this: create places where people learn with each other, from each other, and for each other. The Long Table is one expression of that vision.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

It is.

It's also really hard.

Learning with other people means eventually getting into something we don't agree about. It means listening when we would rather respond, asking questions when we feel certain, and staying curious when something makes us uncomfortable. It means trying to understand another person without making agreement the price of staying in the conversation.

That's one reason AI is such a useful topic.

It is divisive. We love that.

Division isn't the goal, of course. Disagreement gives us something to practice. We got some practice last night!

We've talked around this table about AI and education, loneliness, careers in a changing world, and other subjects that touch people pretty personally. Somehow data centers managed to make our evening about The Loneliness Epidemic look comparatively cheerful 🙂

But difficult was part of the point.

We like to begin these dinners with a question that invites a little vulnerability and gives us a glimpse of one another as people. The goal is simple: before we take positions or make arguments, we remember that we are people sitting around a table together.

We go around with a two-minute sand timer, and everyone gets a chance to answer.

Last night I asked:

What is the first thing you remember worrying about in the larger world?

People remembered Vietnam. Having a draft number. AIDS. Climate change. Hell, as Christianity had taught it.

Several people reflected on childhoods that were well shielded from the realities of the larger world. One person talked about having so many immediate dangers and challenges in everyday life that there simply wasn't any room to worry about problems beyond the doorstep.

It was a remarkable little map of the room: different generations, different fears, and very different relationships to power, safety, institutions, technology, and the future.

Then we got into it.

People came with real concerns, and some real anger. There was a strong feeling of being steamrolled by greed: that decisions with enormous consequences are being made by corporations with far more power than the communities that will live with those consequences. That the public good is not driving the decisions. That something increasingly fundamental to modern life is being built out around us with little meaningful public say in how it should work.

That led us to a question I'm still thinking about:

If computing infrastructure is becoming as essential to modern life as electricity, should we be thinking about it more like a public utility?

We talked about power. Water. Corporate profit. Public infrastructure. Who gets to decide. Who benefits. Who bears the risk.

Because we were sitting in Holyoke, none of this was theoretical. We talked at length about the city's recent decision to ban new data centers, and several people who had been directly involved in that process were at the table. I learned a lot.

The conversation was not easy. The concerns in the room were real, and people were ready to name them. It became harder when the picture got more complicated.

Data centers are not all the same. They don't all use water the same way or consume the same amount of electricity. What they're doing, how they're cooled, where their energy comes from, and what infrastructure already exists around them all matter. Furthermore, we are all using technology that uses data centers to some degree, and becoming increasingly reliant, whether we are aware or actively using AI tools or not.

The more closely you look, the harder it becomes to fit the whole question into a clean story.

Earlier in the evening, we had talked about how much our current information environment pushes us toward outrage, certainty, and simplified narratives.

Then we got to experience firsthand how hard it is to resist that pull.

I felt it too. That may have been the most interesting part of the night. It was also where I was most impressed by the people around the table.

There were tense moments. There were strong feelings, all from a place of care about our world and our shared future. People stayed through it, and stayed kind.

We called the gathering Understanding the Data Center Dilemma because understanding is work. It takes time. It asks us to remain engaged when the subject gets complicated and when the people around us don't see it exactly as we do.

We did not leave with a clear, shared position on data centers. We left knowing a little more about the issue and a little more about one another. That feels worth celebrating.

We cannot affect what we do not understand. Learning how to understand complicated and emotionally loaded things together may be one of the most important human skills we can practice right now.

We are grateful to everyone willing to gather around the table with us! Our next Long Table gathering will be on October, 14, The Minds We’ll Need Next: Neurodivergence in the Age of AI. Love for you to join us to discuss whether neurodivergence might be a super power in our new world.