A visit to a data centre, quantum computing and how lentils determined COP28

Written by Dave Wallace
22nd December 2023

2023 has gone by in a flash. So much has occurred in the last 12 months. And throughout it all, a constant has been how much I have enjoyed writing my thoughts on what has been going on. Happy Christmas to you all!

Data centres aren’t going away, and we’ll likely need more as we head into our collective digital future

Rather than repeat myself and talk about my fintech highlights – which would have included the obvious dominance of generative AI in the news agenda, the loyalty opportunity of embedded banking, the emergence of the ‘core wars’ as new coreless providers enter the BaaS market, and of course Moloch – I thought I would pick two things that have piqued my interested in the last few weeks.

One is pretty standard, and the other is entirely out there, so hold onto your hats. My tongue will be firmly in my cheek!

Let’s start with the standard one. I had the good fortune to visit a data centre last week in a place called Slough. I have wanted to see one first-hand for ages.

Slough is famous for two things: appearing in a poem by John Betjeman (Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, there isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!) and being the setting for Ricky Gervais’s The Office.

Thank goodness the bombs never found their way there, as Slough is now home to a clutch (my idea for the collective noun) of data centres that enable the UK to function.

Data centres are the factories of the 21st century, processing, storing and moving data. Sitting in anonymous business parks in unknown places, they are the underpinning infrastructure of our digital lives. They fascinate me. They represent the human quandary of how we live our lives vs their impact on our planet. We can only function as a modern society with them, yet they are massive energy and water consumers.

I will use a few adjectives to describe what I saw: vast, secure, spotlessly clean, warm, and noisy. The scale I encountered was incredible, but apparently, the one I visited was moderately sized.

My tour of the facility enabled me to fully appreciate what happens every time I do something digitally, such as banking on my mobile, watching a movie on Netflix, or taking a photo and storing it on the cloud. A data centre somewhere in the world receives a command, routes it through a mix of public and private networks, sometimes within the data centre or between others (locally, nationally, or globally), processes and executes the command, and then shoots a response back to my device. And that’s only part of what is going on.

This requires big and small wires and lots of computers. These computers need electricity to work and water to keep them cool. Most data centre companies are committed to net zero, with many striving for negative carbon footprints. They are now waking up to the cost of water and its impact on geographies, including the UK, which has a water scarcity problem.

I was very impressed with the efforts to minimise both. Data centres are here to stay. But those that own and run them seem determined to do all they can to minimise their impact. I mentioned that the centre I visited was hot. Previously, the whole building would have been cooled. Now they have instigated (in line with best practice) hot and cold aisles, so computers face the cold aisle and suck in cold air, and back onto the warm aisles where the hot air is expelled.

This change has massively reduced the energy usage and, very importantly, the water requirements. I also saw efforts to harness wind for cooling and peered into AC units that recycle the water they use to minimise the requirement for more. Excess heat is a problem, but it is being turned into an opportunity. For instance, the excess heat from several data centres is heating the Paris 2024 Olympic pool.

My challenge to the industry is to think creatively about other sources of water. A big one is sewage treatment outflow water, which is grey and needs cleaning, but could be a massive source of water, and would help remove water that is currently polluting waterways and impacting river and sea health.

There will be lots more to come from me on data centres in 2024. These factories are not going away. The reality is that we will need more of them as we head into our collective digital future. At the visit, quantum computing, which will require even more water and energy, was mentioned.

Quantum computing is genuinely fascinating to me, but I find it baffling.

Whenever I try to understand concepts such as superposition, I picture myself as my Labrador who, when I talk to her, looks at me as if to say if only my brain were a bit bigger, I would understand what you are trying to tell me, but I can’t quite grasp it! I have the equivalent of a Labrador brain when it comes to all things quantum.

And quantum segues nicely into my final thought for the year. The editorial team at FinTech Futures has been so good at letting me write about some bold ideas, and my last thought for 2023 is genuinely out there and, as I say, my tongue is firmly in my cheek!

Are we being controlled by lentils?

Bear with me!

COP28 is over, and with many people patting each other on the back, I still feel like we are doomed. The signed document calling for the transition away from carbon has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. I was despondent.

That is until I read an interesting article in the New Scientist magazine in which researchers think that lentils communicate with each other using quantum methods. According to the article, there is incontrovertible proof that plants constantly emit “an extremely weak dribble of photons or particles of light”. Some respectable scientists believe they are a subtle form of “lentil communication”. One such scientist is Catalina Curceanu, who is researching the hypothesis that the “pulses between the pulses” may contain quantum signals in the form of communication. This is not quite as outlandish as it may sound.

As far back as 1923, biologist Alexander Gurwitsch found evidence that germinating plants could communicate with each other. The closer the roots of the plants were, the more cell division occurred, demonstrating some form of communication.

I love the idea that plants intercommunicate and that they use quantum methods to do so. So, could they be trying to communicate with or even control us?

Connecting this back to COP28 and whether lentils control us, here is the big idea. What do plants need to grow? CO2. Maybe our burning fossil fuels is all part of a dastardly plan by the lentils to get loads of CO2 into the atmosphere, which, through climate change, will eliminate us as a species, leaving them to inherit a CO2-enriched world in which to thrive and prosper. Perhaps the COP28 talks were being masterminded by them all along?

Outlandish, I know, but is it any more absurd than the idea that legumes are chatting?

Quantum computing will be a theme for 2024, so again, it is one I will return to because its impact on financial services will be profound.

If only someone could explain it to me in layman’s terms… Hey, ChatGPT!

About the author

Dave Wallace is a user experience and marketing professional who has spent the last 30 years helping financial services companies design, launch and evolve digital customer experiences.