唐士哲

Shih-che Tang

自然資源、基礎設施、尋租、資料、榨取、網路資料中心

natural resources, infrastructure, rent seeking, data, extraction, data center

資料中心是資訊社會的關鍵基礎設施，本文探索其作為數位資本累積工具的榨取意涵。資料中心的全球擴張涉及資本轉換與地方尋租，本文依此探討兩種榨取邏輯，分別是資料的榨取，與自然資源的榨取。就資料的榨取而言，資料中心掌握用戶資料，提供業者開發各種應用程式，造成全球範圍的生活或勞動形式變遷。以自然資源的榨取而言，資料中心是耗能產業，其設址關乎跨國網路機構、所在地政府，以及社區間，關於自然資源徵用的折衝與協調。

This study explores the role of data centers in cloud technology and their effect on the digital economy, focusing on how they operate as logistics devices for capital switching and rent seeking. Data centers are the key infrastructure behind the Internet’s global diffusion. Their sustained operation is ensured by two substantial “local” offerings made possible by capitalist logics of extraction—user’s data and natural resources. Data centers extracted users’ data for developing various APIs. With crowdsourcing platforms and machine learning APIs, flexible employment and the substitution of human labor by AI have created new global inequalities of labor conditions. Furthermore, the demand for “green” and cheap energies has driven high-tech industry to outsource data processing abroad. Yet for host countries, data centers are electricity and water gobblers. Their operation often entailed conflicts and negotiations between transnational corporations, local governments and communities over resource extraction and its effects on community life.