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Most of the information available on cloud computing is either highly technical, with details that are irrelevant to non-technologists, or pure marketing hype, in which the cloud is simply used as a selling point. This book, however, explains the cloud from the user's viewpoint. The author explains what the cloud is, when to use it (and when not to), how to select a cloud service, how to integrate it with other technologies, and what the best practices are for using cloud computing. A simple and basic definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Science and Technology is considered: a model enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Thus businesses, individuals and communities can harness information technology resources usually available only to large enterprises. This, as the author demonstrates, represents a paradigm shift for businesses and individuals alike. In additon, the book considers the contractual, legal, financial, security and risk related aspects of adopting and migrating to the cloud. Cloud patterns are examined in terms of five deployment models; and a cloud computing maturity model is derived to align the use of cloud computing with best practices.A unique aspect of the book is that it provides innovative constructs that affect the way cloud computing shall be viewed and used in the future. In particular, it addresses novel concepts for cloud computing: cloud cells, or specialist clouds for specific uses; the personal cloud; the cloud of things and services; and cloud service exchanges.

Ubiquitous computing (or ubicomp) is the label for a “third wave” of computing technologies. Following the eras of the mainframe computer and the desktop PC, it is characterized by small and powerful computing devices that are worn, carried, or embedded in the world around us. The ubicomp research agenda originated at Xerox PARC in the late 1980s; these days, some form of that vision is a reality for the millions of users of Internet-enabled phones, GPS devices, wireless networks, and “smart” domestic appliances. This book explores the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research program and the contemporary practices which have emerged—both the motivating mythology and the everyday messiness of lived experience. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the authors’ collaboration, it takes seriously the need to understand ubicomp not only technically but also culturally, socially, politically, and economically. The authors map the terrain of contemporary ubiquitous computing, in the research community and in daily life; explore dominant narratives in ubicomp around such topics as infrastructure, mobility, privacy, and domesticity; and suggest directions for future investigation, particularly with respect to methodology and conceptual foundations.

This book tells two closely-related stories: first, how the digital cloud grew out of much older networks, such as television, the railroad, and the sewer system; and second, how the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population (such as state violence and torture). With the latest revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, readers are increasingly aware that the cloud represents politically contested terrain. While typical responses to this debate invoke technological and legal solutions, such as do-not-track software or a new law, this book takes an alternate approach. The perspective of media studies, and, more generally, understanding the cloud as a cultural fantasy, situates these vital debates within a wider American political and social context. It allows readers to understand why discussions of threats to the ‘free’ Internet, such as spam and hackers, often invoke the specter of foreignness (e.g. China, Iran, Nigeria); why Cold War rhetoric has increasingly informed digital threats, as in the New York Times’s invention of the phrase “mutually assured cyberdestruction”; and even why the NSA’s facilities for decrypting intercepted messages are often identical to those used by archivists trying to place digital media into cold storage. By locating the materiality of the cloud within the discourses of security and participation in postwar America, A Prehistory of the Cloud offers a set of new tools for rethinking today’s digital environment.

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most salient recent developments in information technology. Predictions about its future run the gamut, with some believing that it represents a fundamental change the nature of computing and others arguing that it is nothing more than overhyped repackaging of existing technologies. This book represents the first effort to bridge this gap by exploring cloud computing’s implications from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Individual chapters analyze the business case for cloud computing, the changing nature of reliability in the Internet, the implications of treating the Internet as critical infrastructure, architectural changes to make cloud computing more contractible, and the impact of cloud computing on copyright, privacy, and consumer protection.

This book explores the cultural figure of the algorithm as it operates through contemporary digital culture. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash to Diderot’s Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, it explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman’s curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. This book argues that the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in the mathematical concept of “effective computability” but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking. After bringing the full history of the term into view, the book describes how the algorithm attempts to translate between the idealized space of computation and a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Case studies of this implementation gap include the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, Google’s goal of anticipating our questions, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost’s satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, Uber’s cartoon maps and black box accounting, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process as part of a new experimental humanities.