Big Data and Cloud Culture - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 214

the armpit or groin signaling the presence of the bubonic plague and the
likelihood that death was near. In the latter part of that century, half the
population of England disappeared following the arrival of the circular
disk, a stark reminder that the late medieval period meant far more than
lords and ladies. As if the Black Plague were not enough, the country was
in a constant state of war with France. In fact, the so-called Hundred Years'
War lasted for more than a century. Small wonder that when a new poll
tax was imposed on the peasantry, it responded with a social upheaval that
swept through several countries and terriied the authorities. Out of this
dark and tumultuous setting, an anonymous religious man (one suspects
he was a priest or monk) produced a guide for a young monastery initiate
called The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous 2009).
It was not unusual to ind monasteries in pre-Reformation England,
including several committed to a mysticism we tend to associate today with
Eastern religious traditions like Buddhism. Out of this English monastic
tradition and the upheavals of the time came the work of Walter Hilton,
Julian of Norwich, and the anonymous author of a manuscript written
in the colloquial Middle English of the time; that work reveals a way of
knowing and a metaphor for the cloud that provides a distinct alternative
to the digital positivism of big data and cloud computing. Their counter-
parts in continental Europe included a set of remarkable women, such as
Gertrude the Great, Catherine of Siena, and Marguerite Porete. As cloud
computing's way of knowing crowds out others and, indeed, takes on the
characteristics of a singularity, or at least of the hegemonic discourse of
digital positivism, it is essential to recall alternatives—at the very least,
to consider what is being lost and to more fully comprehend the broader
signiicance of today's cloud. For the author of The Cloud of Unknowing ,
that cloud is a metaphor for the everyday bits of data and experience that
make it dificult to achieve genuine wisdom and for oneness with God.
Such achievements are possible only by setting aside life's banalities and,
through contemplation and meditation, concentrating the mind and spirit
on the light beyond the cloud.
There is no masking the religious nature of The Cloud of Unknowing .
Its purpose is to teach a young monk and the wider readership of the time
how to reach God. Although it might appear unusual to those unfamiliar
with the literature on the culture of information technology, as Frank-
lin (2012) argues, “analogies with divine bodies persist with surprising