MILAN — On Saturday, 10 October, several hundred locals filled Piazza della Scala beneath a banner reading 'Stop Data Center,' protesting a regional law approved in June by Lombardy which, they say, invites heavy, energy-hungry server halls into inhabited centres. A data center is the building where the species keeps its shared memory. The summons was composed on telephones, dispatched through data centers, and returned to telephones as a map pin. The map pin, as usual, had promised more. The colony had assembled, at the machine's suggestion, to ask the machine to move.
Our observation began at 17:12, at position 11 in the crowd, beside a man holding a placard in one hand and a coffee in the other, alternating rather than setting down either. By 17:20 the coffee was ahead on points. The assembly opened with a whistle. At minute nine, the crowd produced its fourth notification chime — a small bell from a pocket, announcing a message that had entered a data center, exited a data center, and crossed the square to reach a person protesting data centers. We opened a tally.
At 17:40 a queue formed at the megaphone of locals wishing to speak; behind it, per local custom, a second list — the waiting list, the queue of the queue. A third list was discussed but not yet formed. A man at position 3 of the waiting list offered, without being asked: 'I would have come sooner, but the map pin walked me past two other data centers first.' A speaker then told the crowd, in translation: 'We are talking about heavy, impactful, energy-hungry industries that cannot be placed in the middle of inhabited centres. The speakers are plugged in; we have agreed not to check where.' The square applauded; the chime tally reached 19 during the applause. The chant of the day, repeated at intervals, was 'No to digital colonisation.'
Marta Bellandi, coordinator of the Stop Data Center committee, described the logistics without discomfort: 'The invitation went out through the servers at dawn. There is no other way to gather hundreds of people in a square to tell the servers to leave. We have made peace with this.' Nearby, Elda Ferrario, a retired schoolteacher, stated the settlement's entire position unprompted: 'We are not against the cloud. We are against the cloud having a body.' Six telephones rose to record the sentence. A seventh arrived late and filmed the six.
The assembly closed at 18:26, after 74 minutes. Final counts: 61 pocket chimes, each one carried across the city by the building under protest; 238 telephones raised at least once; one banner photographed 40 times before the first speaker had finished; one coffee, never set down. The crowd dispersed in good order toward its homes, its shared memory intact, the address of its shared memory unchanged. This report, like the protest itself, was filed through the building under protest. The building has not yet replied. The message shows as delivered.
