I wandered by the Internet Archive today, because when you live in the Richmond District of San Francisco, the Internet Archive isn’t just a browser tab. It’s a giant physical building (a former church built 101 years ago, back in 1923) that you walk by on your way to get some walnuts from the farmers market, and some dim sum for lunch — and to return the graphic novel that the library has been, understandably, nagging you about. Anyhow, there’s an art exhibit currently in the main hall at the Archive, so the side door happens to be open, and you head on in, and there, along with the exhibit, are stacks and stacks of servers, each of them occasionally evidencing a pinging blue light when data is being accessed, and collectively they emit the hum of information in action.
Did you record it ?
I want to hears said hum.
I intended to record the servers’ hum but I couldn’t isolate it from the sound of the nearby art exhibit, which had 50+ computers all playing the same recording of a woman saying “om,” all slightly out of sync.