Groups linked to the data centre industry are increasingly targeting children and schools to improve its image as opposition to large new sites grows in the United States, Wired reports.
The magazine says the nonprofit 7×24 Exchange International promotes an "International Data Center Day" for schools, offering crosswords, colouring pages and science activities, and recommends children's books about visits to data centres. In May a regional chapter of the trade group AFCOM sponsored flag-making kits for 3,100 first-graders at 37 schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, the area known as Data Center Alley, along with a card on the industry's local economic benefits.
Alex Molnar of the University of Colorado Boulder told Wired that industries with image problems, including fast food, tobacco and oil and gas, have long taken their messaging into schools.
Source: Wired
