“While the thing that moves through the sky is in fact a formation of water vapor, water crystal, and aerosols, we call it a cloud to give a constantly shifting thing a similar and more abstract form. Something similar happens in the digital world. While the system of computer resources is comprised of millions of hard drives, servers, routers, fiber-optic cables, and networks, we call it “the cloud”: a single, virtual, object.”

“The particularly interesting thing about cloud computing is that it is so heavily about climate control: server farms are carefully managed environments that cater to the well-being of the machines that ignorantly and yet with high-speed accuracy convey the things we talk about online, from #lolcats to emails, from memes to alternative facts.”

“It was terror that built the network. The need for instant response and communication was based in nuclear readiness, as was the RAND proposal that invented the core functionality of internet connectivity, along with the highway system that later became the pathway for our fiber-optic cabling. The desire for these systems of response and control derived from a constant and ambient fear of total destruction, a Cold War anxiety that permeated daily life.”

“These schmucks with five copies of every RAW file they’ve ever shot, one on a rotating series of hard disks shipped for security to a vault in Norway? Those guys? They’re just throwing their pictures away in a very complex and expensive fashion. You really think they’re gonna be able to find that one out of focus shot of a pileated woodpecker they took on their camping trip in Wisconsin, some time in the fall of either 2015 or 2016? Of course they can’t. Even if they could, they’re not going to spend the hour digging around through 8 possible different hard drives that sit on a shelf. These people aren’t even camera enthusiasts, they’re storage enthusiasts, and they suck at storage.”