From stones to the cloud

I remember, not so long ago, I used to make my school reports using our precious typewriter. Then I would have it hard bound (that was the best filing method I knew of at that time), to get some extra points. When the PC was first available, I remember how excited everyone was. I was particularly excited that I could just keep on typing, not worrying about making mistakes because I could always “undo”, delete or revise it without limits. It was the time when the ideals for a “paperless environment” started.

A variety of data storage devices have been marketed since the “Computer Era”. There were the floppy disks, diskettes, external and portable hard drives, USB/ flash drives… until a few years ago, the Cloud was introduced.

In my understanding, a Cloud is a physical data storage where data can be saved and retrieved via the internet. Just like the cloud that covers the sun, it is always there wherever we go. All we need to do is to connect to the internet in order to upload or download data at our own convenience. The term Cloud came from the old WAN diagrams where internet providers were represented by the cloud and the connections were represented by a lightning bolt.

It is amazing how far we have gone since the days of our ancestors. History books say that the ancient way of documentation was writing on stones. Though, they say, it is done primarily to record history or to tell a story, some people do the same to express art or simply leave a message. From that ancient time on, people never stopped finding ways of making this more convenient by making the tools lighter and smaller for accessibility and ease of record keeping. At this time, the Cloud addresses all that. We do not physically keep records anymore and it is accessible almost anywhere. So there, what once was kept on stones is now stored in the Cloud…