2026 05 04

The future is bright in Lebanon, Indiana. April, 2026 © Clayton Hauck

Preface: I am merely working through some thoughts on a difficult subject in a public manner, as I love to do!

It finally caught up to me. The dread of knowing hard drive prices have gone up astronomically has been subdued for a few months, as I haven’t yet needed to buy a new one. I’d also recently purchased one measly share of SanDisk stock, which has gone up over 100% already and netted me an on-paper profit of a thousand dollars. If I sell the share and pay the taxes on the short-term gain, I could purchase one new 4tb ssd hard drive. That should get me through the year, so long as I don’t shoot any video or do too many Keep it 100 portrait sessions.

Last week, while driving the back roads to a photo assignment in Indianapolis (INdianapolis, as I say in my head to much amusement), I happened upon a wild scene: hundreds of acres of flat-as-can-be Midwest farmland had been dug up and prepped for development. Endless rows of temporary lighting told me there was an urgency to this operation, if the small rural road jammed with heavy trucks didn’t already do that job. It was a stark contrast to the sleepy landscape I’d been passing through just moments prior. Surely, this is what the makings of a future data center look like, I thought to myself while paradoxically using my Tesla’s self-drive feature to allow me to snap a few photos on my iPhone. While this played out, Scott and Kara discussed Meta’s earnings on the Pivot podcast and I felt the world shrink even more.

After I wrapped the shoot that afternoon, I decided to do some internet digging into what is going on over in Lebanon, Indiana. Turns out, Meta is in the midst of constructing a 1,500 acre $10,000,000,000 ai-powered data center (which comes with 300 new jobs!). The company that just fired 10% of its workforce, while my Facebook feed is filled with so much inaccurate garbage I get the impression nobody actually works at this company, nor cares much about what is said or done on its platform. But what do I know, I’m just a simple man paying $750 for a hard drive so I can fill it with pretty pictures.

Demoralizing.

I don’t really have the words to summarize my feelings toward our current place in time, but I will tell you that almost nothing feels good about where we are heading as a society. Allowing these tech oligarchs seemingly full access to everything we do, say, or think in exchange for giving back so little to society, to me, goes well beyond the anger phase and straight to defeat. My sense is there’s nothing I can do or say to change the outcome and I’m more or less forced to participate or be left behind.

Of course, as soon as we’re all reliant on this new-found ai-powered “efficiency,” the tech giants will start to charge us real-world prices. After we subsidize all of their infrastructure to run it, we will then be left another bill to further enrich them. Or maybe a revolution happens? It’s starting to feel like these are the only two possible outcomes. But what do I know? I’m just a simple man who pays $750 for a hard drive to fill with pretty pictures.

The actions of our dear tech leaders tell me that art itself is in danger of being demonetized. Off the top of my head, from recent memory, they have called for the end of language (Musk), a privately-controlled ai surveillance state (Karp), and zero introspection (Andreessen), while Bezos guts the Washington Post, Zuckerberg and Altman build underground bunkers, and Thiel aims to live forever. Reality is becoming more terrifying than a Hollywood blockbuster.

Some venting was needed. I finally hit a breaking point today when I decided it was time to look up hard drive prices. I bought one in December 2025 for $385 and today the same model is selling for $750. Where will I put my pretty pictures?!?

The full output of these hard drive manufacturers has been gobbled up to fuel the new ai data centers that are helping to automate away my photography job (and likely your job, too!), so now consumer prices have jumped 100% in a few short months. I’m essentially left with a choice: do my job as I had previously but pay significantly more (while making less on top of that); OR change my behavior and adapt to the reality of the situation I am in. Of course, I will choose to adapt. Maybe I don’t need to take so many photos anyway. Maybe it’s time I get a real job down at the town data center.

-Clayton