What Exactly Is “The Cloud?”
Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Hey there!
One of the features of Rehearsal® Pro, my app for actors, is that as you add highlighting and other markup to your scripts, record scenes for playback, etc. the app will automatically save all of those changes to the cloud.
That way, if you have more than one device, like an iPhone and an iPad, you can keep your scripts and sides on both devices synchronized.
But let’s back up for a moment…the cloud? What is that? Do you hear that phrase and nod politely?
Here’s what “the cloud” means.
Hope this helps!
David
Raw YouTube Captioning
hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and today I want to discuss with you a
phrase that I use you know all the time
and that just became clear to me the
other day when I got a couple of
questions about it that not everybody
knows what this phrase means it’s the
phrase the cloud what is the cloud as an
example with rehearsal Pro you can do
your script markup your highlights your
comments your recordings of scenes on
one device and have them show up on
another device because we share them via
the cloud our particular version of the
cloud first why is it called the cloud
well in network diagrams when a network
engineer is laying out what computers
are going to be used where and how
they’re going to be used the Internet is
usually represented by an icon that
looks like a cloud which is why IBM uses
the cloud for its cloud services so
that’s why it’s called a cloud because
all of these computers are accessible
via the internet you have to have an
internet connection to access the cloud
now what is the cloud it’s nothing more
than a collection of computers usually
stationed around the world working
together as one big organism and it’s
not just one cloud there are a number of
clouds but they’re referred to as the
cloud so for example you probably seen
Apple’s iCloud that’s a cloud they have
a number of computers thousands of them
around the world that store data for Mac
users and iOS users people that use
iPhones and iPods and iPod and iPads
google has cloud services that they sell
to businesses also consumers can buy
storage on Google Drive which is nothing
more than a series of hundreds of
thousands actually of computers that
work together to store people’s data
Microsoft has a service called asier
which is usually aimed at
at businesses Amazon same thing they
have Amazon Web Services or AWS and we
use s3 as a storage service and ec2 as a
computing service and that’s kind of the
way clouds work either they’re doing
storage of data just simple storage of
data or if you need to operate on that
data with a computer program with with a
program of some sort or a server of some
sort then you use a computing cloud
which actually is just kind of like your
your personal computer it just exists on
the internet it exists in virtual space
it’s not an actual necessarily a
physical box so the cloud itself is
called a cloud because it not only about
that icon but also because like clouds
they kind of circle the earth they work
together they’re kind of a connected
organism kind of thing I hope that
explains what the cloud is if it does
great let me know in the comments below
and if it doesn’t if there’s something I
can clarify for you let me know in the
comments below especially on VOD gogo
comm we use the cloud to store our
videos YouTube is a cloud-based service
and we’re also going to be starting to
use the audio from these videos as a
podcast so if you don’t have a screen to
watch at some point you can just use the
Apple podcast app and listen to the
audio because most of what I do is
pretty aural as opposed to purely video
so on the rare occasion that I show an
icon like I did in this video for the
IBM cloud I’ll probably call that out in
the audio but that’s what we’re gonna be
doing and I’m gonna be resurrecting the
personal NetCast with everything that
went along with that in the early 2000s
in the mid-1990s if you’d like to join
my youtube channel go ahead and click on
my head over there if you don’t see my
head there’s a subscribe button
somewhere on the page if you’d like to
watch the latest video that I’ve done go
ahead and click on that frame and
YouTube will play it for you I’m David H
Lawrence xvii I thank you so much for
watching and I will talk to you tomorrow.
To add a little more detail: network engineers used a cloud icon to represent any network whose architecture was not consequential to the diagram at hand. The cloud was meant to represent the fact that something was there, but you didn’t need to know what, exactly.` This diagramming convention became the perfect metaphor for The Internet, which most non-technical people have no clue about, and a clever ad agent realized that The Internet was The Cloud (not just “a cloud”).
When I first saw TV ads featuring “The Cloud”, I disliked the implication that there was an actual thing called The Cloud. Its imprecision still bothers me a bit, but I’ll admit its original use is intact: it’s a place where data goes and comes back, and that’s all you need to know right now.
To me, The Cloud is really about offering services without the user having to know the technical details of what was really providing it. “You need a server? We can provide something that looks logically like a server, but which has greater reliability and flexibility. Just tell us what you need, and connect to it through the Internet.” That would be what they cal IaaS, “Infrastructure as a Service.” And of course there are many variations on that theme.
Stuart’s quite right about the diagramming convention. And with 30 years experience with computers and IT I certainly appreciate the implications. The word that resonates with me is “nebulous.” And that typifies the cloud to me — stuff goes into the cloud, and stuff comes out, and you don’t care about the details; just so long as it works. As a consumer, do you care where that server is physically located when you are placing an order on Amazon? No. You don’t even think about it. It has become increasingly reliable over the years and we just expect it to work. Welcome to the cloud.