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I'm just another geek who's grown up with unnatural levels of ventilation, so I don't mind the noise outright. The whitish noise can mask traffic or other environmental noises, and certainly, sound tells us how things are working. Up to the point they intrude on other needs. Conversations, entertainment, etc., all have their own need for equipment to STFU.
And then there's the mental health of silence. Between birds and the winchester whine, I'll take quiet PC's any day. There's something fatiguing about a full day of head-out-the-window data-center whoosh. My office will never make it since I'd have to radically change too much equipment, but if I were in a quiet neighborhood and had the option it'd be an easy choice.
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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