[ih] Geek Terminology (was Re: Resource sharing)

[Ofer Inbar]

Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net> wrote:
> Of late I have been wondering:  Has that term's definition morphed
> without me noticing, or did I use it incorrectly back in the day?
>
> When I was active in networkish stuff in the late 20th century I "cloud"
> was a device (, metaphorical) for talking about entities that could
> communicate without much caring how the details in the cloud were arranged.

My impression is that the current "cloud" meaning developed out of the
long-standing habit of representing the Internet as a cloud on network
diagrams, and that that habit in turn came from the older meaning of
"cloud" that you describe.

John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> Actually it is a bigger threat to us this time that the previous
> incarnations, but we seem far less concerned and much more trusting
> of it.

I'm not sure people are that "trusting" of it, but the tradeoff today
involves a much greater level of convenience and value that this
delivers to typical users of today.  People make the tradeoff because
the value they get feels worth it, but I also hear a lot of uneasiness,
and there are many coping strategies where people try to still get the
value but mitigate the risk.
  -- Cos