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I think what we're observing is just the evolution of marketing to people with increasingly lower amounts of technical acumen. At one point, "on the system" was

by jcr 14y ago

I think what we're observing is just the evolution of marketing to people with increasingly lower amounts of technical acumen. At one point, "on the system" was understood to mean something is stored on the time-sharing mainframe, simply because everyone used dumb terminals to access the infamous "system". As technology progressed and computers became smaller, more affordable, and more capable, the lingo changed to "on the server" since you actually had the capacity to store something on your "system". The odd part is we still expected the "server" to be located locally (in building, on campus, &c.), When a server wasn't located (implied) "locally", it was called an "off site" server and was typically accessed over private, dedicated lines/connections. This lingo survived for a while when access methods changed to using connections over the public Internet -- TYPICALLY DRAWN AS A CLOUD IN DIAGRAMS! Some marketing person who didn't really understand technical diagrams of networks saw the amorphous "cloud" representing the Internet in the drawings and started referring to "the Internet" as "the cloud." Needless to say, this lingo caught on with the non-technical folks, and has been used ever since. I sincerely doubt we'll get rid of the phrase any time soon since the majority of people on this planet are non-technical and they tend to use the simple "hype" names they have leaned. The most interesting bit to all this linguistic history is you can accurately profile people with it. For example, "Did he capitalize 'Internet'?" --definitely an old fart.

bigiain 14y ago
No, we've already lost to the people using "the cloud". When you've got players like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, Sales Force, etc - all referring to important parts of what they do as being "the cloud" (and all having different explanations of what "cloud computing" is), it's clear the the terminology is here to stay, no matter what it's origins or the intents/uses people once had for it.
- jcr 14y ago
  If you read my post again, it seems we're "violently agreeing". As I said, I doubt we'll get rid of the phrase. Then again, from this point forward, I have every intention of depicting the Internet in network drawings as a fishing net labeled "Net" with the hope of tricking the marketing types into using "In the Net" rather than "In the Cloud". I doubt it will work, but it would still be fun to try. ;)
  - bigiain 14y ago
    Heh. I think I might start drawing Visio diagrams with what used to be labelled "the cloud" instead labelled "the marketing department". When anybody asks, I'll say "nobody knows or can explain what happens in there or why, we just know that you put data in, and usually _something_ arrives at the destination. Company policy dictates that we have to use it, so we send all our data through it in ways where we can detect and correct any changes made in transit" ;-)

by jcr 14y ago

bigiain 14y ago

No, we've already lost to the people using "the cloud". When you've got players like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, Sales Force, etc - all referring to important parts of what they do as being "the cloud" (and all having different explanations of what "cloud computing" is), it's clear the the terminology is here to stay, no matter what it's origins or the intents/uses people once had for it.

jcr 14y ago
If you read my post again, it seems we're "violently agreeing". As I said, I doubt we'll get rid of the phrase. Then again, from this point forward, I have every intention of depicting the Internet in network drawings as a fishing net labeled "Net" with the hope of tricking the marketing types into using "In the Net" rather than "In the Cloud". I doubt it will work, but it would still be fun to try. ;)
- bigiain 14y ago
  Heh. I think I might start drawing Visio diagrams with what used to be labelled "the cloud" instead labelled "the marketing department". When anybody asks, I'll say "nobody knows or can explain what happens in there or why, we just know that you put data in, and usually _something_ arrives at the destination. Company policy dictates that we have to use it, so we send all our data through it in ways where we can detect and correct any changes made in transit" ;-)