From Furniture to Fiber, a Town Changed
Where the Internet Lives
English - April 05, 2023 09:00 - 15 minutes - 14.1 MB - ★★★★★ - 116 ratingsTechnology Society & Culture Documentary computer science data centers google internet sustainability technology Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Lenoir, North Carolina, was once a global furniture manufacturing hub. For Rachel Scercy, the furniture industry was the center of her family life. And then the jobs vanished in the 1990s.
Today, communities like Lenoir are often seen as great sites for data centers because of their strong industrial histories. In 2007, Google built a $1.2 billion data center a mile outside of Lenoir, creating over a thousand jobs to date – hundreds in construction, and hundreds of permanent jobs in operations. Since then, the region has attracted more data centers from other top tech, retail, and entertainment companies.
Intimately experienced with the ups and downs of Lenoir's economic transformation, Rachel is part of Lenoir's new generation of workers who are employed at a data center rather than in the furniture industry.
about career opportunities and Google’s investments in communities like Lenoir.