The public fascination with the possibilities of a better tomorrow animates domains of inquiry within the technological realm, opening up spaces of debate and discussions. They praise planetary scale computation for its ease of use, but convenience comes with a lot of issues we don’t want to face.

Like all mediations, the Cloud suffers from an inner dialectic. The visual symbolism of the cloud pushes us to think about something lightweight, an innocuous phenomenon moderating the relation between ourselves and our digital production. However, the power used to process all this information leaves behind huge markings on the our surroundings. Indeed intense power and cooling demands of the hardware are serious issues so many organisations have to coping with in order to stay up with the competition.

A revision of all the physical infrastructure that bares the imprint of CC would uncover the vast dichotomy of the new local/global dialectics. Vast data centres will become mammoth facilities on the surface of the earth and not only, using as much electricity as a small town. These farms are part of a world-wide-chain of accidents, all concealed by the promise of commodity.

In observing a sky full of clouds, we usually recognise the larger patterns but are somehow unwilling or unable to gain a deeper understanding of the singular parts and of the forces that affect them. Whatever its inner configuration, the Cloud behaves as a vaporous container. It represents a collective mental space occupied by swarms of codified information. The Cloud is the catalyst of a global principle of organisation, where information is generated, stored, and distributed. Of the virtualisation of already abstract concepts. We are perennially situated under a Cumulus that pledges to secure, store and process our data in abstract systems invisible to human eyes. We are constantly feeding an absurd chaos of contingencies hovering above our heads. 

In order to demystify the inner workings of the Cloud, we have to first locate it within the intercourses of our society. The Cloud is a newer model of a changing world, based on a mutual global digitising consensus. To mediate with the optimisations brought forth by this new geography, we must learn how to deal with its emergent digital ecosystem. We will have little choice but to comply to its convoluted nature, a mechanised axiom that will standardise our digital beings. The Cloud represents a new ethos. It epitomises the core of our modernity, a vigorous mingle of technological bliss.