Data centres and the ‘cloud’

Redundant data

Sir, – Liam Butler (Letters, August 27th) refers to energy-guzzling data centres, storing largely redundant data, such as a teenager’s 17,000 photos and videos from a phone.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we, sometimes selectively, had to erase data from our phones to accommodate more.

Now, without much thought we let “the cloud” take care of all our data while not conscious of what’s potentially historically useful and what’s redundant. We don’t equate “the cloud” with the energy-guzzling data centres.

It is high time that we or our internet providers were able to separate potentially historically important data from the enormous amount of trivia.

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Alternatively, we will have to revert to putting pen to paper and physical face-to-face communication.

We need to get the balance right. – Yours, etc,

DAVID WALSH,

Delgany,

Co Wicklow.