Right now, there is a yawning gap between what communities will increasingly want from data centres and what is currently being delivered. They are often done to local communities, not by local communities. This is why many societies are wary of the wider social benefits of data centres, since sovereignty is often perceived to sit with large, nameless corporations or Big Tech firms that sit predominantly in Silicon Valley. Many digital incumbents advertise the benefits of cloud storage and high-performance computing, which is nebulous and of no fixed address, where faceless, globalised organisations are themselves without physicality and where place-based identities grounded in local communities are not seen as a priority. There’s another gap too. The current societal and economic value of data centres is not fully realised by local communities, planning authorities or politicians. This is because large swathes of the general public find the purpose and utility of data centres hard to grasp. There is a disconnect between their Instagram posts, the data it creates, and its subsequent digital storage in a physical environment. This is because little thought has gone in to trying to develop a set of aspirations for what can be possible. And lastly, there is a gap in accountability. Data centres, as a growing and increasingly important sector of the economy, have not had to fully engage as responsible stakeholders at a wider society level beyond the land, power and water that they consume… until now. This is because there is no agreed blueprint or roadmap on what a socially-conscious data centre looks like.