Cloud Engineering — in the Year 2387
We are writing the year 2387. The cloud is the newest hype technology and is actually a different technology than you may think of in the year 2022. It is more about providing a form of life insurance or better, a form of immortality. By now humankind has figured out how to create digital copies of someone’s personality and memories. This information is stored on a digital chip called a “Stack”. The size and form factor of these stacks is comparable with spine bone and technological somehow like today’s SD-Cards.
Stacks store their information in artificial DNA. Before anyone can use these stacks, you need to get an implant in your neck. The implant is connected to your main nervous system which connects the human brain to its body. This allows you to execute the so-called “sleeve protocol” which is able to decode the information stream that runs through your nerves and can also send dedicated commands to your brain. This technology enables the possibility to download data from your brain and store them on a stack. But for now, this protocol can only be executed when you are asleep because your brain has to be in a “maintenance” mode. When a brain is in this condition, you are not able to process any input from your senses. If this protocol is not ended properly, this might cause severe damage to your memories and even the nervous system because the nerves are working on high activity during this process.
Because every stack is about the same size, you and your personality are no longer tied to one specific body. So, if your body is severely injured you can take your stack and put it in another body and have a fully functional body again. This implies that death is no longer tied to a specific body but when your stack is destroyed and there is no chance to restore or “resleeve” you into another body. If you have the money to afford it, you are able to purchase multiple stacks, so that you have multiple backups of your memories.
There are two major downsides of the resleeving process. First, when you restore a backup to another body, you lose all memory of everything you have experienced since your last backup. Second, if your new body or bodies are not “build” by the same specification as the current or are from a random “donor” the process can be painful. This is somewhat similar to an organ donation because your brain is used to the old/current body and the nervous input from it. But every body is slightly different and sends different signals to your brain. Therefore, your restored save from the stack needs a few days as a grace period to get used to the new forms of input.
But at this point, you may ask what cloud engineering is about. The vision is to make backups more affordable, accessible, also less complicated, and less painful. To achieve this, the current proposal is a network of interconnected data centers that circle around the earth in special spaceships. So, at this time the term cloud can be taken literally.
First, let’s clarify why this has to be in space and not in data centers on earth. There are several advantages. One is, that solar power has better availability because the data are circling around the earth, they are not dependent on fluctuating day/night circles, and also weather and seasons do not have effects if the solar power is produced directly in space. For example, there are no clouds that can block sunlight from the panels and let them produce less power overall. Another reason is the availability. Due to the fact that the satellites are floating around the earth, they can be accessed through a radio signal at any given point no matter where you are. The third perk of these spaceships is cooling. Because temperatures in the earth’s orbit are very low, there is no cooling system needed.
The job of a cloud engineer is now to maintain this infrastructure. In order to get this job done, there are several fields of specialization. The four main strings are navigation, intercommunication, ground communication, and backup processing.
Navigation is a crucial part of the cloud because satellites have to follow certain routes in order to get a sufficient level of coverage on earth. The other part is to avoid collisions. Cloud satellites are by far not the only flying objects in space. So, they do not only need to communicate with each other to exchange location data to avoid contact but also need to get data from other satellites and spaceships so that they do not collide. The priority is still high because there is still no effective method to get rid of space waste.
Intercommunication between all satellites is mission-critical to keep the stack data available at any place. Therefore, the satellites form a giant peer-to-peer network. This reduces the necessary amount of storage because the data is only replicated to a small number of satellites but never present at all satellites. If the data is now requested on earth the ground station reaches out to the nearest satellite, but chances are high that this data center does not contain the requested data. So now it reaches out to its nearest peers to request the data from them and so on.
Ground communication ensures a stable connection between the satellites and the ground station. The most complicated part of this discipline is to efficiently switch between satellites while keeping the connection alive. This is necessary because the satellites are flying at very high speeds around the earth, and this makes a long connection time to a fixed station on the ground complicated. The solution to this is, the ground station establishes the connection with one satellite but the satellite itself shares the connection details immediately with its peers so they can take over the communication as soon as they have a better connection.
The backup processing itself is also a huge part of the cloud because the goals lead to more seamless integration into everyday life. The current research in this field focuses on getting data out of the brain while a person is awake. The second stage would be wireless access to one’s stack. Therefore, the adapters need to be upgraded to be able to communicate with a wireless or cellular network. If this connection has been established a person could connect in several intervals to the cloud to constantly back up their brain.
Credit
This short story is inspired by Altered Carbon — Richard K. Morgan
