Blog #2: “The Cloud” -Me in a Toy Story Alien voice (ARCHIVED)
It’s not even a cloud.
PROMPT: What is the cloud? And how it is important to me? Describe in detail.
In all honesty, I don’t understand why it is called the cloud. But what I do know is that “the cloud” is a non-local computing system that does things for you. You would interact with these systems through the Internet, connecting to a server from your device. Cloud systems may also be accessed through different forms of technology ranging from computers to smartphones. Cloud systems can date back as far as email as email was kept on the host’s server and you were able to access it at any time. An example of this can be cloud storage systems: Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud. These storage systems hold files on their computers rather than your local hard drive. They can also be really cheap with many providers being able to provide up to 100 gigabytes for free. Plus you can upgrade with plans to be able to get more storage for things like videos and photos. Cloud systems may also be used to back up files in the case of a crash or corruption. The service iCloud is able to back up Apple phones for when users lose their data or buy new phones. Apple’s cloud system is also used for phone system updates which is whenever a new version of iOS is released or users using a beta version. Other uses may be using cloud to place important files while you wipe a hard drive. The files would be kept safe as other files would be deleted. Cloud storage systems are good overall as they can be used in many different ways. Cloud storage systems also have their fall backs. When working on something like a document or a presentation, they may save every few seconds. However, in the event that a loss of internet connection occurs, you may lose what you were working on in that amount of time. There’s also the question of cyber security. Some cloud storage providers may not be trustworthy and may tamper with files and other things. You may also lose data or have data corrupted depending on how bad the company is. The cloud is important to me because with the access of internet becoming more and more available as the decades go on, cloud will also become more available. If the growth of the internet continues to stay or even go further, cloud may be the new standard for storage and computing alike. I would go as far as to say it actually is the current standard, apart from local storage systems. It is also very important for me because almost everything I do for school work is on Google Drive which is a cloud service. Without it, it would be disorganized with a risk of losing files due to deletion or corruption. With cloud services , I don’t have to worry as they are kept on the Google servers. Sharing is also easy as to share for other people only involves a Google Account. With the lack of cloud tools like Google Drive, school work would be more difficult as managing offline files would be a bigger hassle.
