What, and who, powers the internet? If the internet were a country, it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity in the world. A whopping 247 billion emails are sent through the web every day, and growing.
Though it is thought of as a ’green’ method of communication, the virtual universe is just as damaging for the environment as it is heavy in its energy consumption.
Nevertheless, the internet’s huge resource consumption exists at odds with its lack of energy resources. We visit ‘data center’s’, the digital warehouses that work day and night as the nerve center’s of the next digital economic war. Some big companies like Google or Apple have responded by building new center’s that run on renewable energies. But unless others follow in their steps, could the battle to power the Web trigger a third industrial revolution?
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How does the Internet work? What energy does it use? May it be that the Internet is not as magic, as clean, as one thought? This films explores the hidden face of the web: huge data-centers that rely on cheap and reliable energy: coal. Our emails, our tweets, our messages on Facebook could be responsible of the destruction of the mountains in Virginia, unless the big players of the internet decide to change their mindset…
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This documentary was produced in 2015.
Content licensed from Java Films to Little Dot Studios.
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