You are right. Most people are against scale and progress. I don’t think it’s about big tech. I don’t think it’s about data centers. I don’t think it’s about emissions or water. It’s about scale.
The thing about data centers is that some are being built in this gold rush manner and people can't see the through line to how they will benefit from them. Data center infrastructure companies are making deals with town councils in rural areas that include restrictive NDA's so the voters can't inspect what the deal involves. Combine this with AI fatigue where every time you use a website or app and some new AI feature is being pushed on you and a lot of people just feel like completely overwhelmed by the situation.
If the data center companies were smart, they would be open and cooperative with the communities they are trying to build in. But they are impatient and think they can just throw more money at the problem and shove it down the community's throat.
Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.
Datacenters don’t need to use much water outside of normal office needs. They don’t need to increase energy costs. They don’t need to pollute or make any noise in normal conditions.
If they do any of those things in normal operations, it’s due to lacking regulations or the lack of enforcement of existing regulations.