An interesting BBC podcast on the history and true nature of the cloud.
We connect to the cloud, think of it as place-less, a digital “elsewhere” for storing and retrieving our data, content and memories. But far from being immaterial, the cloud is a vast, physical network made up of concrete, silicon and steel, of earthbound server farms, subterranean data centres and cables beneath the sea. It is not a publicly owned space or digital 'commons'. It is a multi-billion dollar, private infrastructure dominated by some of the world’s most powerful companies—principally Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The cloud exists within the same geography that we do: a patchwork of national and legal jurisdictions, which determine—most of the time—what it can and cannot do.