Data Center vs. Office Center Construction

The US spends almost as much building data centres as it does building offices. In a few quarters, these lines will cross. When they do it might represent a profound shift in how we think about economic productivity.

We could be ushering in a new factor of production, to sit alongside labour, capital and land. So this chart isn’t about construction. It is about where future economic output will be created.

The office was about concentrating human beings. A place to marshal human labour. Data centres are about concentrating the computation needed for AI, which could reduce the need for more labour in the future.

We could be entering an era where productivity is extracted less from people, and more from silicon.

That shift has consequences. Offices shaped our cities and our urban lives. We built subways, downtown centre, coffee shops and restaurants because of them. They even influenced the way we dress when we go to work.

Data centres will shape our energy grids, our use of water, our land politics, and even our geopolitics (and possibly future wars). They are invisible in daily life, yet they may end up shaping our future more profoundly than the tallest skyscrapers ever did.