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perfection amounting to variations on the technological sublime. They
differ only in how perfection is imagined. For Salesforce, the sublime
is rendered in businesses enabled by the cloud to do the impossible. In
Microsoft ads directed at a business audience, perfection means tech-
nological change without negative disruptions. In a different form of
perfection, Microsoft's cloud brings to consumers the technological key
to creating the perfect family. For IBM, progress comes from building a
smarter planet through a culture of knowing that extends rational thought
and practices to all areas of social life. Finally, there is Apple, deepening
and extending the perfection already present in life through harmonious
synchronization of all the devices that ill our lives.
There are no guarantees that the discourse embedded in advertise-
ments is the same as what viewers, readers, and listeners take away. After
all, a quick review of comments reveals that some people were offended by
Microsoft's perfect-family ad and some thought the company had no busi-
ness claiming that the ads revealed anything about the real meaning of the
cloud. It is hard to imagine anyone convinced by the company announcing
without irony or satire, “To the Cloud.” But the point is not about assessing
the extent of an ad's inluence. That is much too dificult to accomplish with
any scientiic rigor. After all, there are many other variables to consider.
Does someone's adoption of iCloud or some business's decision to join
the IBM SmartCloud have any direct relationship to an advertising cam-
paign? Advertising may or may not have some small or large impact. What
these campaigns undoubtedly do is create and build cloud computing in
discourse. They deine and teach individuals and organizations what cloud
computing is and what good it can accomplish. This is important to ill a
void in the absence of any clear understanding, and especially signiicant
as a means of countering journalistic and research accounts that identify
signiicant problems with cloud computing. By associating cloud comput-
ing with perfecting individuals, families, and organizations, promoters
of the cloud construct an alternative to stories about environmental risks,
power outages, pervasive surveillance, and threats to jobs in the IT ield.
Blogging the Cloud
Commercial advertisements were once the overwhelmingly dominant way
to promote a product. While they remain signiicant, there are now many
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