ESSAY · 2026

One quiet morning in Goshen, Virginia, I stepped outside to the sound of thrushes in the trees and the rush of a nearby creek. Mist lifted off the fields. The Blue Ridge stood solid on the horizon. Nothing about that scene felt "outdated" or in need of disruption.

Yet later that same day, the county agenda buzzed with talk of data centers, cloud infrastructure, and broadband expansion — another push to make our region more "competitive in the digital economy." The disconnect was striking. Standing under the open sky, you can't help but wonder: why are we so determined to build a more digital world, when it comes at such a cost to the living one?

THE STORY WE'RE BEING SOLD

The dominant story goes like this: digital equals progress. Moving services online makes life easier. Connecting everything makes communities "smart." Embracing AI and data centers brings jobs and investment. From tech ads to government speeches, the message is clear: if you're not racing into the digital future, you're being left behind.

This story is emotionally powerful. It plays on our desire for convenience, our fear of irrelevance, and our hope that technology can solve big problems. But it leaves out something essential: the physical reality behind the pixels.

THE "CLOUD" HAS A FOOTPRINT

We talk about the "cloud" as if it hangs weightlessly in the sky. In reality, it lands on real ground in real places — places like rural Virginia, Iowa, Arizona, and beyond.

A few years ago, I sat in a local meeting where representatives pitched a proposed data center campus not far from our small town. They spoke of tax revenue, fiber upgrades, and the prestige of "joining the digital economy." What didn't appear on their slides was just as important: how much electricity those server buildings would demand, and from where; how many millions of gallons of water would be pulled from our watershed for cooling; how much land would be cleared, paved, and fenced to keep the machines humming.

Most in the room were hearing about "jobs" and "innovation." I was hearing the quieter part: our creek becoming a resource input for distant cloud customers, our landscape becoming a support system for someone else's data. Nothing about that proposal felt immaterial. It felt heavy — on the land, on the water, and on the future.

WHY WE KEEP DOUBLING DOWN ON DIGITAL

If the digital world is so resource-intensive, why do we keep pushing deeper into it? Part of the answer is simple: the benefits are immediate and personal, while the costs are delayed and shared. You feel the convenience of online everything today. You don't immediately feel the strain on the aquifer or the grid. The mining for device components or the dumping of e-waste happens far away, often out of sight and out of mind.

Another part is structural. Our economic system rewards whatever drives quick growth and new markets. Digital expansion does exactly that. It can be built and scaled rapidly. It can be framed as "clean" compared to a smokestack. It can be wrapped in language about "connectivity" and "inclusion," even when the underlying infrastructure is chewing through energy, materials, and water.

And then there is a more uncomfortable driver: control. The more our lives move onto digital rails, the more power accrues to whoever owns those rails. It's not just about better tools. It's about control over communication channels and information flows; control over the data that predicts and nudges our behavior; control over essential services that once existed physically in communities and are now mediated by remote platforms. Building a more digital world gives corporations and governments a finer-grained handle on our attention, habits, and dependencies. That incentive is strong enough to overshadow a lot of ecological reality.

THE COST WE DON'T COUNT

When we talk honestly about the digital boom, we need to widen the lens beyond jobs and innovation to include what rarely makes it into glossy presentations. Energy: data centers, networks, and devices already consume a sizeable fraction of global electricity, with demand rising fast as AI and "cloud everything" expand. Water: large facilities can use millions of gallons a day for cooling, straining rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers — especially in drought-prone regions. Materials and waste: extracting metals and minerals for devices scars landscapes; millions of tons of electronic waste pile up every year, often processed in ways that harm workers and environments far from tech headquarters.

These are not abstractions. They show up in lower river levels, higher utility bills, and degraded ecosystems. They show up when "smart growth" quietly erodes the very places people moved to for quiet, clean water, and stars at night.

RETHINKING WHAT WE CALL "PROGRESS"

None of this is an argument to abandon technology or slam our laptops shut for good. It's an argument to rethink what we mean by progress — and who gets to define it. Instead of asking, "How do we make everything more digital?", we might ask: How much digital infrastructure can our ecosystems actually sustain? Which digital tools genuinely improve human and planetary health, and which mostly feed profit, distraction, and surveillance? How can communities have a real say in whether a new project serves them — or simply uses them as a backdrop for someone else's digital empire?

If the digital world continues to grow by quietly consuming the living one, that is not progress. That is a slow trade of forests for server farms, rivers for cooling loops, community autonomy for platform dependency.

BRINGING IT BACK TO THE CREEK

I think about that morning in Goshen often. The creek was flowing. The birds were loud. The sky felt wide. On days like that, the idea that our future depends on being more "online" rings hollow. What if our measure of a good future were different? Kids who know their local river as more than a line on a map. Towns whose decisions protect water and soil before they chase the next data center deal. A relationship with technology that supports living systems instead of quietly hollowing them out.

We still have time to ask better questions, to draw firmer lines, and to insist that the digital world be a servant to the living one — not the other way around. The next time you hear about a new cloud project, smart initiative, or AI rollout, try this simple test: does this make the real world healthier and more resilient, or does it merely make the digital world richer and more powerful? Our answer to that question, in thousands of local decisions, will shape the future far more than any marketing campaign or buzzword.

This is the question in front of my own community right now. See what it means for Augusta County, Virginia →