A piece of ‘Cloud’ circuitry

Technological developments boomed in the late Oil Age with information storage (employing circuit boards such as this example) and machine intelligence (known as AI) occupying an ever-growing role in human life. At its peak, people no longer knew (or used) their own minds.
Information was said to be stored in ‘The Cloud’. In deep contrast with the ethereal qualities of its name, ‘The Cloud’ had a huge energy and land footprint, which grew exponentially in the late Oil Age. This necessitated  the building of tens of thousands of data centres. These particularly proliferated in countries with access to the cheapest electricity, for example, China and the USA, and was often fuelled by the dirtiest fossil fuels.  In the early 21st century the largest data centre in the world was known to be Inner Mongolia Information Park, a complex of 100 hectares which consumed 150MW of electricity per hour. This was soon dwarfed by subsequent developments.