Datacenter

Hot aisle, cold aisle, white raised tile

More power, they cry - more HVAC, they yell

Data’s the matter and it lives on the platter

Let’er spin! Let’er spin! Let’er spin!

That forty-mil whine

Hot spare, cold spare

Who labeled these runs?

Off-prem is on-prem, somewhere

Let’er spin! Let’er spin! Let’er spin!

That forty-mil whine

Reflash, rebuild, restart

Roll the crash cart! Roll it fast – roll it smart

God, let it not go quiet here!

Let’er spin! Let’er spin! Let’er spin!

That forty-mil whine

All this, for those nowhere near

All that inarticulate fear

All this – the Atlas beneath the world

So we say – Let’er spin! Let’er spin! Let’er spin!

That forty-mil whine

***

I have memories of grade school - those little short stories, those poems in English class. What little oral tradition we have in the West lived on in written form in this way - the last vestiges of the culture of the old days. I hope that young students still read these today.

All manner of work songs, sea shanties, or ballads were how the working folk kept their neglected heroes alive - these were not commercial efforts like modern music; these were ways to stay sane in the heat, during intense, grinding physical labor, day after day. There was no money in this music - it came from the heart, from true need. It is more pure and genuine in its nature than almost anything made commercially today.

In contrast to our near continuous auditory isolation, people could not lose themselves in their own individual music on headphones. Instead they sang or hummed together. If you wanted music - you made it yourself.

I think about how we have almost completely deserted this commonality of experience, this form of communion with our fellow men. I feel that this is yet another way in which the modern human is now more alone than ever.

***

So many thousands of people work in datacenters now - they are today’s factory, today’s coal mine. But they have no songs. So I wrote one.