Short abstract:

Data landfills provides an alternative framing of data centres’ purported function, re-contextualising our understanding of the utility of data centres by uniquely positioning their data-driven processes in the realm of waste economies using a decolonial lens in the context of post-colonial Ireland.

Long abstract:

The digitalisation of social relations has been precipitated by the mass collection, creation and storage of data through bulking physical infrastructure known as data centres. Data centres and their expansion are as much a certainty in the public imagination as the growth of grass. However, these centres, often obfuscated in their existence by the very terminology used to describe and naturalise their positionality and function, such as “silicon forest”, expose critical fault lines in the localities burdened by their resource-intensive nature, such as post-colonial Ireland. Their very existence in these localities poses the question of what utility they provide, how much of the data within these centres actually serves a daily function, and how much is simply sitting dormant, never to be retrieved again. In conversation with critical discard studies, critical data studies, and with a decolonial lens, this research will conceptualise “Data Landfills” as the inevitable consequence of this era of systematic datafication. This paper aims to open a modern-day black box by interpreting and classifying the wasteful industrial practices behind the data that resides within the data centre nexus of post-colonial Ireland and its contemporary developmental landscape. In doing so, this paper challenges the logic of growth that underlies data centre expansion in the face of an unfolding climate and biodiversity crisis. Data landfills provides an alternative framing of data centres’ purported functions, re-contextualising our understanding of the utility of data centres by uniquely positioning their data-driven processes in the realm of pollution and waste economies.