The Importance of Knowing What Runs the Internet

Why do we choose to approach the most cutting-edge computer technologies of our brave new world using the language and concepts of cavemen? We talk of loading data "up" to somewhere--but where do we mean? Heaven? We transfer data via ethernet cables as if data were "ethereal." Developers of tomorrow's computers talk excitedly about "cloud" computing. We don't marvel at a Ford factory and think the finished cars are the result of magical processes. bit when we conceptualize the Internet we become spiritual and nebulous.

Notes:

When we forget that the Internet is run on masses of logic circuits performing binary algebra in refrigerated server farms all over the world, we fall prey to magical metaphors about it. This quote comes from a picture set of server farms in the magazine.

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The View From Inside a Cloud

Periodicals>Journal Article: Norfolk, Simon (2010), The View From Inside a Cloud, The Baffler Literary Magazine, Vol 2, No. 01, Chicago, IL, Retrieved on -0001-11-30