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it is being sold in advertising, social media, private-think-tank reports,
intergovernmental reports, lobbying, and trade shows. Discourse, myth,
and magic have a large role to play in creating the cloud.
It does sometimes feel as if technologies appear like magic, not deus ex
machina but more like machina ex deo , as machines emerging from the
genius of inventors (preferably working in their parents' garages). Even
well-regarded biographies like Walter Isaacson's (2011) on Steve Jobs
cannot help but build a shrine, even as they tell a good story. Indeed,
when it comes to technology, the shrine appears to be an essential part
of the story. Myths celebrate this magic and it is important to take this
process seriously because it helps us to understand how we think and feel
about the cloud. But it is also important to draw back the curtain on this
version of “the great and glorious Oz” and reveal the process that gives
life to the magic. As Chapter 2 described, cloud computing is made up
of data centers, servers, software, applications, and data, all of which are
designed, built, and operated by thousands of workers, ranging from
highly skilled engineers to unskilled laborers. These provide the familiar
foundations for successful cloud systems. But the cloud is also made up of
words, starting with the name cloud , as well as the images and discourses
that give shape and form to how we think about cloud computing. Put
another way, technology is not only composed of the material that enters
its creation; it is also deined by the labor of those who design, build, and
operate it and by the language we use to describe and imagine it. More
formally, technology results from the mutual constitution of objects, labor,
and language. This chapter focuses on how cloud computing is created
in language and discourse by constructing, with an eye to selling, the
cloud sublime.
Assessing the effort to sell cloud computing is important because
companies in the cloud business have a steep cliff to climb if they are to
convince companies, government agencies, and individual consumers to
sign up. That is because selling the cloud means convincing a potential
client to give up its data on employees, customers, products, services, and
competitors and trust that it will be available when needed. This raises
questions about data security, the privacy of transactions, system reliability,
and the future of the client's IT unit. Businesses and government agen-
cies know that when a cloud company tries to sell them on the idea of
ending dependence on separate data silos, they are not just talking about
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