Today’s column (gift link), like many of mine lately, is about the friction between technological advances and human well-being.
For all the talk of innovation in business and political circles, you see precious little of it on any given day. We humans love our patterns and, to paraphrase George Carlin, half of us are of below-average intelligence. That’s why we are so easily lulled into a stupor as the years fly by, realizing change long past the point we could have influenced it.
That’s why I find today’s debates over data centers to be so interesting. Regular folks and the B-list commentariat (including me) have been watching innovation and change from afar, noting the development of things like artificial intelligence from the cheap seats.
But data centers make everything local. These are real things, big things, industrial giants that we will see and live alongside. For better or worse, we will absorb their effects the rest of our days. They might improve our lives, but they could also take our jobs, health and even most of our electricity. That is, if the world’s largest and most powerful companies have their way. And while they probably will, they haven’t yet. And that’s what makes this interesting. The little people still have a little leverage.
What can a guy like me offer this debate? Well, we’re talking about the dawn of a new industry. And because I spent much of the last ten years researching the rise of U.S. Steel and its impact on the Mesabi Iron Range, I can tell you a few things about new industries and the human capacity to check their power at the outset.
Read “Data centers are coming. How will we regulate them?” in the Sunday, March 29, 2026 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Minnesota Star Tribune. His new book about Hibbing Mayor Victor Power and his momentous fight against the world’s largest corporation will be out soon.
