History of Computers - The Cloud

Page created by: Sean Paul Gras

Introduction

Although the idea to have cloud computing was thought up of in the 1960s the actual popularity and widespread use of The Cloud did not happen until more recent years. On top of that bandwidth was not at a big enough level for The Cloud to really exist over the internet. However in the recent years use of The Cloud has skyrocketed to become one of the biggest ways to store information. All types of companies from Google to Steam to Apple have begun using The Cloud and have made it into one of the most important technological advances of the internet. [1]

Overview

The Cloud is a network of computers (in varying locations around the world) that can collect information and then retrieve it so long as one is connected to some form of internet. The Cloud thus takes a lot of the workload off of the computer someone is running because all one has to do rather than run a lot of programs or have amazing specs is just run The Cloud's interface software and voila.[2] There are many companies that use The Cloud in varying ways. For example Google uses it as a a place to store documents, presentations, and the such and makes it available for anybody to use/have someone edit it even if they are not the owner, Steam uses it to store games and game data on other servers to then be transferred from computer to computer wherever the user may need it, and so on so forth. The whole point of cloud storage is to lessen the strain on one's computer to then access one's files through the Internet.[3]

Significance

The thing about The Cloud is that it completely changed the way information was gathered and stored. Instead of leaving it on one' hard drive The Cloud put the information somewhere very far away and difficult to get to. On top of that most people do not know what The Cloud even is, they just refer to it as some sort of entity that they cannot touch despite the fact that it is a simple idea. The Cloud essentially is used in so many places that by now people are generally using it whether they want to or not. As such people are at the mercy of the servers. If they were to crash or stop working then a lot of files may be lost and no one would be able to retrieve them again.[4] However the likelihood of that is fairly low and companies will generally have some sort of fall back plan to ensure that information is saved. The way things are looking is that The Cloud may become the only way to store information in the future. The fact of the matter is that because The Cloud is cheap or free and everyone is connected to the Internet then it is a possibility that one day hard drives may become obsolete. People will stop relying on their own systems to run a lot of different programs (save for the OS) and will just rely on a connection to the Internet and cloud computing.[5]