A few weeks ago I was in my local Apple store to get a new mouse. After making my purchase I spent some time looking at all the shiny new Macs. Of course, each display Mac had a series of screens that explains the device’s features. After looking at several, I noticed a pattern. They were all talking about “The Cloud.”
Cloud Computing has been around for a long time, going all the way back to the original AOL platform where all of your communications were stored in your AOL account on their servers, aka, “The Cloud.” Like a ground-based cloud (fog) Cloud Computing has drifted around us and is so pervasive that like fish in water that don’t know they’re in water, we interact with The Cloud almost every day and don’t realize it.
When you look at the promotion screens on the new Macs, it looks as if The Cloud is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it does indeed enable us to do amazing, far out things. But, what exactly is The Cloud? And by structuring a society so entrenched with The Cloud, are we more vulnerable than we realize?