Data centers can't be beautiful until AI serves a meaningful societal project
round · x · 2026-09-04
A philosophical thread invoking David Nye's "technological sublime": 20th-century American infrastructure — electrified cities, dams, highways, the space program — evoked awe only because it belonged to a deeper matrix of national meaning. Today we speak of AI agents building civilizations while lacking a meaningful project of our own. Without one, no amount of Art Deco pastiche or Blade Runner brutalism will make data centers beautiful — beauty requires a civilization going somewhere. Respondent Miquel notes industrial landscapes already harbor the aesthetic of power; seeing them as dystopian is on us.
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