The Cloud vs. The Cloud

And the broken Internet dream.

Yesterday, I attended a talk about screens and their impact on children. The speaker was the lead doctor from a local hospital, and in addition to sharing research, he discussed his experiences treating disorders in young minds. But that is not the topic for this week. He mentioned many things, but one that particularly caught my attention was how he described the cloud, somehow accurate, but missing completely the critical point.

Prompted and edited by the author.

At one point during the talk, he explained that people perceive the cloud as something almost metaphysical, intangible, present everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And he also said that this perception gives a false sense of security. So, we are not afraid that our data might be misused or harm us because in our minds, it exists nowhere.

Then, he began to describe what the cloud actually is. His view, which he shared, is likely the most prevalent in our society. He discussed the cloud in terms of hardware, like computers distributed around the world with massive hard drives storing and processing everything we do. And honestly, he’s right, and that view is correct. However, he missed a very important nuance.

What he didn’t explain, possibly because he is a doctor, not an engineer, is that the current system we call the cloud is essentially a…