Are data centers the new anthracite?<\/p>\n
Editor: Scranton has always been my reality. The city my family called home for generations. The same streets, the same valley, the same American question underneath it all \u2013 what are we becoming?<\/p>\n
The Casey Highway\u2019s makeover illustrates the pattern perfectly. Immediate gratification, foregone consequences. Look at the hillsides today. We\u2019ve traded generations of forest for the barren footprints of data centers \u2013 clearing the land before we\u2019ve even cleared the air on what these \u201cprojects\u201d actually provide. We\u2019ve seen this before \u2013 wealth extracted from our earth, leaving us with the tab and the landscape of what once was. Today, as data centers begin claiming hundreds of acres of Pennsylvania land, the question isn\u2019t whether investment is welcome \u2014 it is. The question is what kind, and at what cost.<\/p>\n
Our city still feels like a museum of its own obsolescence. The architectural marvels still stand. The stories of a thriving industrial past still circulate. But the path forward is becoming murky, and I\u2019m not convinced trading industrial land for data storage is the answer Scranton deserves.<\/p>\n
We hear \u201cjobs.\u201d But how permanent? When these positions are overtaken by automation, what remains? Scranton was once a beacon of industrial sovereignty \u2014 coal, manufacturing, the backbone of a nation. Our nation. Now we appear ready to become a hard drive housing the country\u2019s ChatGPT queries.<\/p>\n
As a Stayer \u2014 someone who chose to remain when leaving was easier \u2014 I ask this simply: is this the future we\u2019re consenting to?<\/p>\n
Joshua K. Burke, Scranton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are data centers the new anthracite? Editor: Scranton has always been my reality. The city my family called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2116,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-177740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-data-centers","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}