The rain is most definitely pouring down in Kampala this weekend. I’m staying inside and I want to deliver some heavy video files to a friend that I am still working on. Besides I want to send them fast and free.
Of course sending via the cloud is the number one option, I am even spoilt for choice about which cloud platform to use; Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Google, all seem to be in this cloud business.
Communication today has never felt this liberating and ubiquitous. Like, I-can’t-live-a-day-without-my-smartphone ubiquitous. Any pitfalls would mean break down in the ASAP-kind communication process. What we need is a saviour in an iron suit costume welding a magic wand ready to set things right, just in case.
You know what I mean. One quick glance at your phone and BAM — it’s like a brass knuckle to the face. Like some zombie apocalypse horror movie right before your eyes. Either your nudes have leaked and/or you’re out of internet data and another BAM; battery low whilst the electricity distributor takes a subliminal sabbatical!
Look, forget the fact that the phone is a tool designed to help you connect with others, save time or solve problems. That’s just some trivial nonsense. The real problem comes about how to securely keep us tucked onto the information grid. Yeah right, we’re connected this whole new thing known as the cloud. Like, it’s this clever kind of connectivity that keeps all our touch devices, wearables, enterprise gadgets in sync. And would save lots of time sifting from device to device. How cool, uh! Now I try squeezing an opinion about the cloud from 6 year old niece. Her answer was surprising, “uncle, won’t your documents [sent via the cloud] get wet, look, it’s raining?” Smart kid, I think to myself but it was a rather frustrating experience trying to explain to the little girl the nitty gritties.
So you have been living a lie. It’s not an actual cloud.
Remember that time you visited a particular website and you had to accept the “cookie” policy to proceed? Well, every time you accepted, the webmaster wouldn’t receive a cookie/biscuit. These aren’t real cookies, too, just a bunch of techie programs to boost user experience.
But what is this cloud computing thing?
Again, the term itself has been abused ad nauseam not only by the users but also, disturbingly, by the real hardcore technical developers.
Thankfully the Daily Mail just recently cleared up this whole ‘cloud’ thing, “Every time you snap a photo with an iPhone, for instance, a copy is uploaded — not to the actual cloud — but to a bank of gigantic humming and whirring computers in vast warehouses thousands of miles away in California or North Carolina.”
Below is one of Google’s data centers that serve us the cloud as we like to know it.
For some of the clever chaps probably doing Philosophy at College, the cloud is some infrastructure hoisted in the heavens which aide in the transfer data. Apparently most of us think alike. Perhaps, the cloud is a self-contained platform where all of our information is kept safely. Besides, nobody lives there, no voyeur will even manage to set a thumb on our jealousy guarded information.
Don’t fall for that crap. Seriously. They clearly aren’t thinking about the pain inflicted onto the world by those fussy rendered faux-clouds or the completely mundane manner in which we literally give away all our life details.
Cloud computing is a quantum advancement in the way the internet is served to about 3 billion people connected, while that is sinking in, remember; the internet is a public place — as a matter of factl, the most public of public places.
Image | epiccloud.ca
