From the telegraph to AI, our communication systems all the time had hidden environmental costs

When we post in a gaggle chat or speak to an AI chat bot, we don’t take into consideration how these technologies have arisen. We take it without any consideration that we are able to communicate immediately. We only notice the meaning and range of those systems in the event that they are usually not accessible.

Companies describe these systems with metaphors akin to “cloud” or “artificial intelligence”, which indicates something intangible. But they’re deeply material.

The stories which might be told about these systems about novelty and progress. But these myths cover the human and ecological costs to make them possible. AI and modern communication systems are based on huge data centers and U -boat cables. These have tall and grow Environmental costs from increasing energy consumption to switching on data centers to cooling.

Nothing latest is about that My research Shows. The first world -tensory communication system was the Telegraph, which made it possible to speak between some continents in almost real time. But there have been considerable costs for the environment and other people. U -boot telegraph cable were packed Gutta-LenserThe rubber -like latex, which was extracted by colonial staff from tropical trees. Forests were felled to grow plantations of those trees.

Is it possible to design communication systems without such costs? Perhaps. But like that KI investment bubble Shows, environmental and human costs are sometimes ignored within the race for the following big thing.

From the “Victorian Internet” to AI

Long -distance communication was painfully slow before the telegraph. Sending messages by ship can take months.

In the 1850s, telegraph cables made it possible to quickly communicate between countries and other oceans. The telegraph had turn into omnipresent until the late nineteenth century. Later as “named”Victorian web”, The telegraph was the predecessor From today's digital networks.

The construction of Telegraph networks was a giant undertaking. The First transatlantic cable was accomplished in 1858 and over 4,000 km between North America and Europe.

Australia followed closely. European colonists created the primary telegraph lines between Melbourne and Williamstown within the 1850s. Until 1872 the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin Was done. The message could reach the world from Darwin.

There are clear differences between the Telegraph and today's AI systems. But there are also clear parallels.

In our time, fiber cables withdraw many routes from the now outdated U -boot telegraph cables. Practically all (99%) of world web traffic moves through Deep sea cable. This Cable Wear all the pieces from Google search processes to speak interactions to the transfer of knowledge Near the speed of sunshine From your device to distant data centers and back.

Historical reports Describe the Telegraph otherwise as a divine gift, a miracle made by humans and a networked global intelligence, removed from the fabric reality. These descriptions are usually not removed from the AI ​​that’s talked about today.

Extraction

In the nineteenth century, the Telegraph was generally seen as an emblem of progress and technological innovation. But these systems had embedded other stories like that Logic of colonialism.

One reason why the European powers were preparing to colonize the globe was to extract resources from colonies for their very own use. The same extractive logic might be seen within the Telegraph, a system that has gained a natural technological progress towards environmental and social costs.

If you’re looking at a bit of telegraph cable in a single precisely museum Or at historical sites where U -boat telegraph cables landed, you will notice something interesting.

Wound across the wires is a combination of test yarn and Gutta -percha. Cable corporations used this naturally occurring latex to isolate telegraphs from the hard conditions on the ocean floor. Satisfy the high demand, Colonial powers Like Great Britain and the Netherlands, the harvest accelerated of their colonies in Southeast Asia. Rainforests were forced to reap the latex for plantations and indigenous peoples.

The Australian telegraph had include real costs as a primary nations Truth about projects And Interdisciplinary researchers have shown.

The overland telegraph line needed large amounts of water to separate batteries and maintain human operators and their animals to repeater stations. The Demand for water contributed to the lack of life, forced expropriation and the pollution of the waterways. The legacy These effects are still experienced today.

Echos of this colonial logic might be seen in today's AI systems. Today's focus is on technological progress, no matter energy and environmental costs. The international energy agency inside five years Estimates The world's data centers could require more electricity than all of Japan.

AI is way thirsty than the telegraph. Data centers generate plenty of heat and water have to be used to maintain the servers cool. Researcher Receive the proven fact that the AI ​​use is required between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water by 2027 – in regards to the same volume of Denmark per 12 months.

With the rise within the generative AI, each Microsoft and Google have significantly increased their water consumption.

The production of the for the training of KI dirty miningDeforestation and poisonous waste.

As an AI scholar Kate Crawford has arguedAI have to be understood as a system, which suggests:

Embodied and material comprised of natural resources, fuel, human work, infrastructures, logistics, history and classifications.

The same applies to the telegraph.

Planning for the longer term

Telegraph corporations and the imperial networks behind it accepted environmental promotion and social exploitation as a price for technological progress.

Today's tech giants follow an identical approach and run an increasing number of powerful models and canopy up the far -reaching environmental sequences of their technologies.

Since the governments should improve Ordinance And the accountability obligation must proceed to assume with the intention to implement ethical standards, to force the transparent disclosure of energy and environmental impacts and to support projects with a low impact.

Without decisive motion, AI becomes the danger of becoming one other chapter within the long history of the technologies that act the well -being of man and the environment for technological “progress”. The teaching from the telegraph is obvious: we’ve to refuse to just accept use as innovation costs.