WIP: Engineering Faculty Data Center Imaginaries: An Exploration of Pre-Pushback Perspectives of Internet Infrastructure
Plain Language Summary
Data centers, the buildings that house the computers behind the internet and AI tools, have recently become a flashpoint of public concern over energy costs, water use, and local jobs. In this work-in-progress paper, we look back at interviews with engineering instructors conducted before that public conversation intensified, asking how they understood data centers at a moment when the controversy had yet to shape how most people talked about them. Doing so gives engineering education a baseline against which later shifts in how faculty think about this infrastructure can be read.
Contribution
Where research on data centers as sociotechnical infrastructure remains limited in the United States, we contribute a baseline account of how engineering faculty collectively imagine data centers, drawn from interviews collected before the "pushback" against "AI data centers" took hold, and read through the sociotechnical imaginaries framework originally developed for energy transitions.
Research Questions
- Through what sources and experiences do engineering faculty come to know data centers, and what risks and governance concerns do they associate with them?
Methods
We draw on previously collected qualitative interviews from an NSF CAREER project on faculty mental models of AI in the classroom, conducted between January 2025 and December 2025. Of 169 participants, the 26 who discussed data centers form the present sample, and we analyze their statements through the sociotechnical imaginaries framework.