About Extracting WV 2.0
Extracting WV 2.0 is a digital humanities project that aims to examine the ever-changing history of extraction in West Virginia, tracing these connections between the state's long legacy of coal mining and the emergence of data centers. While coal extraction has long shaped the state's land, labor systems, and communities, this project aims to show similar patterns in the new, digital age.
By examining the damage caused by the physical extraction of natural resources through coal mining to the less visible extraction of data, energy, water, and humans as a resource, Extracting WV 2.0 explores how patterns reemerge throughout history. Data centers, which are often framed as symbols of the future and innovation, require extensive amounts of electricity, water, and land to function. This raises questions about who benefits, who bears the burden, and how these impacts are distributed through communities.
Through archival materials, critical analyses of current events with data centers, community resistance, both past and present, and legislation, this project invites readers to reconsider what the word "extraction" means and looks like in our current time. It highlights how older systems of industrial exploitation echo within today's digital age, encouraging a deeper understanding of how the past continues to inform the present, and future, of West Virginia.
This project was created by a class of Master's-level Professional Writing and Editing students at West Virginia University. Contributors include Madison Giles, Madisyn Magers, Allyssa Persinger, Sarah Ransom, Colleen Benison, Moe Brown, and Luke Monti.