Look up in the sky…
July 10, 2009mike No Comments »… its a bird… its a plane… its an app for that? No, its a cloud, or more specifically “the cloud”. Surely everyone has heard of the cloud, no I’m not talking about in 4th grade science class when you wanted to be a TV meteorologist, I mean the internet. Why do we call it the cloud? I’m guessing its because in one of those multicultural nonverbal picto-setup-charts that comes with every computer, network adapter, modem and router with little colorcoded goodness there is a picture of an ethernet cable (or phone wire in the old days) going from the port on the computer to… the cloud (or in reality the wall, but doesn’t a cloud look prettier?). Everything talks to the cloud, my phone, my cable box, my computer, my toaster… ok maybe not my toaster but I’m sure there are some toasters that do! What does the cloud say to them? Depends on what question they ask I guess. Mostly 010101101000101… no really, but what are we doing with all this clouding? I really don’t know. It is pretty slick though, as much as I hate on the big G how they have taken software that MS charges big bucks for and has it available for free in the cloud. Better still your documents can stay in the cloud to rain down on whatever devices calls for them. But what are the limits of the cloud? For starters there is pretty much no cloud on airplanes, no matter how much turbulance is outside. You can, for a low low fee of $30/min use the airphone and plug into a… dial-up modem jack, dial into an ISP… and get the cloud. Not worth it! And soon (ask Richard Branson) planes will be full of clouds too. And I know you can get Google Docs offline (or just download Open Office from Sun… up past the clouds?) but soon we will be seeing cloud only devices, and by soon I mean I’m sure there are plenty out there. What will the cloud do for us? Whatever you want it to I guess, ask the big G, I’m sure we’ll see a toilet running their apps soon. So get ready, its up in the sky and its down in your pants.
Join the discussion