Data that warms: Waste heat, infrastructural convergence and the urban politics of energy efficiency
供暖的数据：废热、基础设施融合与能源效率的城市政治
Author: Julia Velkova （朱莉娅·维尔科娃）
Source：《Big Data & Society》2016
Abstract: This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of ‘waste heat recycling’ and charts the ways in which data centre operators in Stockholm and Paris direct waste heat through metropolitan district heating systems and urban homes, and valorise it. Drawing on new materialisms, infrastructure studies and classical theory of production and destruction of value in capitalism, the article outlines two modes in which this process happens, namely infrastructural convergence and decentralisation of the data centre. These modes arguably help data centre operators convert big data from a source of value online into a raw material that needs to flow in the network irrespective of meaning. In this conversion process, the article argues, a new commodity is in a process of formation, that of computation traffic. Altogether data-driven heat production is suggested to raise the importance of certain data processing nodes in Northern Europe, simultaneously intervening in the global politics of access, while neutralising external criticism towards big data by making urban life literally dependent on power from data streams.
文摘：本文探讨了数据中心运营商目前如何重新配置欧洲首都的能源和热力供应系统，以数据驱动的热能生产取代传统供热方式，并正在成为重要的能源供应商。文章以服务器机房产生的热量为经验对象，追踪了“余热回收”这一日益扩展的现象，并详细阐述了斯德哥尔摩和巴黎的数据中心运营商如何将余热通过城市区域供热系统导入城市家庭并实现价值化。借鉴新唯物主义、基础设施研究以及资本主义价值生产与破坏的经典理论，文章概述了这一过程发生的两种模式，即基础设施融合与数据中心去中心化。这些模式有助于数据中心运营商将大数据从在线价值源转化为一种无论其含义如何都必须在网络中流动的原材料。文章认为，在这种转化过程中，一种新的商品——计算流量——正在形成。总而言之，数据驱动的热能生产提升了北欧某些数据处理节点的重要性，在干预全球访问政治的同时，通过使城市生活在字面上依赖于数据流的动力，中和了外界对大数据的批评。
Keywords: Waste heat; data heat recycling; data furnace; computation traffic; big data; server cooling
编译：刘鑫
