Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: hell Stuff Works, and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: this is another bonus episode from Sunny Las Vegas. Nevada,
Speaker 1: or I should say Nevada. I've been informed that is
Speaker 1: the preferred pronunciation among the locals here. I just pronounced
Speaker 1: it the way most people pronounce it. So I apologize
Speaker 1: if I fall by the wayside yet again. But yes,
Speaker 1: I am here attending sweet World eighteen is a big
Speaker 1: cloud computing conference, and uh, I just wanted to start
Speaker 1: producing some episodes while I'm here. This is one of
Speaker 1: those special things where when I go to events and conferences,
Speaker 1: my goal is to give you guys more of the
Speaker 1: stuff you like. So I'm gonna drop a few episodes
Speaker 1: this week. Hopefully, uh you'll get them as the week
Speaker 1: goes on. There's going to be one today about cloud computing.
Speaker 1: But I also plan on doing specific ones about net
Speaker 1: sweet That is the organization that throws Sweet World every year.
Speaker 1: An Oracle, which is net sweets parent company, Oracle purchased
Speaker 1: net Suite, a couple of years ago, and so I'm
Speaker 1: going to cover those as well as well as maybe
Speaker 1: any other kind of cool topics that I happened to
Speaker 1: encounter while I'm here at the conference. So far, it's
Speaker 1: been kind of an overview, So that's where I'm going
Speaker 1: with UH for now. And I've I've talked about cloud
Speaker 1: computing in the past. Um I've I've covered it a
Speaker 1: couple of times on tech stuff, but it kind of
Speaker 1: bears going over again because it's one of those big
Speaker 1: buzzword terms that I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: heard and most people, I think, by this point have
Speaker 1: a fairly good grasp of what it's all about. But
Speaker 1: there's still some confusion out there, and I kind of
Speaker 1: want to clear that up. So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: what exactly is cloud computing, How did cloud computing evolve
Speaker 1: over time, because the idea is pretty old, why is
Speaker 1: it such a big business, and and how does it
Speaker 1: actually work? What's going on there? Well, first things first,
Speaker 1: cloud computing is a very broad term. It covers an
Speaker 1: enormous number of different offerings and services, but in general,
Speaker 1: it's a method of delivering services over a network, essentially
Speaker 1: allowing people to access a computer that does not belong
Speaker 1: to them in order to do something. Now that something
Speaker 1: could be storing information, it could be processing information. It
Speaker 1: could be uh developing an app, it could be all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, and we'll cover a lot of that
Speaker 1: in this episode. But your computer, the one that you
Speaker 1: are using to connect to the service, is not doing
Speaker 1: the work. In fact, it could be a very bare
Speaker 1: bones computer. That's the basis behind some of the very
Speaker 1: weight notebook computers like chromebooks. The idea is that you
Speaker 1: really don't need to have a lot of bells and
Speaker 1: whistles in the laptop itself because you can access all
Speaker 1: the applications and services that you require using the Internet,
Speaker 1: and some other computer out there in the great, big
Speaker 1: scary world is doing all the work for you, so
Speaker 1: your computer doesn't have to. That is in some ways
Speaker 1: a big benefit to the end user because it can
Speaker 1: really cut down on your upfront costs. Right because if
Speaker 1: you are just going out to buy a very simple computer,
Speaker 1: one that does not have an incredibly powerful processor or
Speaker 1: a whole lot of storage space or whatever, then the
Speaker 1: price can be lower. It doesn't have to be as
Speaker 1: big a ticket item for you when you go out
Speaker 1: there and purchase it. On the flip side, a lot
Speaker 1: of these services end up being subscription based services, so
Speaker 1: you're paying to use the service in some way. Some
Speaker 1: of them are add based rather than fee based, so
Speaker 1: you're still technically generating revenue, but you're doing it by
Speaker 1: looking at ads as opposed to paying a subscription service.
Speaker 1: But in a long term, over a really long use
Speaker 1: case scenario, it could be argued that you're a little,
Speaker 1: you know, lightweight chromebook kind of of computer. Cost more
Speaker 1: than if you had purchased a computer with native software
Speaker 1: stored on it, but you would have less capabilities as well.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to cover all of this and more
Speaker 1: detailed throughout this episode, so just know the cloud computing
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty big deal. It's it's not
Speaker 1: just big as in it makes huge amounts of money.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a multibillion dollar industry. But it's a
Speaker 1: big deal because it covers so much ground as far
Speaker 1: as the features that can be grouped under a cloud computing. Now,
Speaker 1: the cloud computing model as you take advantage of another
Speaker 1: computer's capabilities to bolster your own, and like I said,
Speaker 1: the service could be as simple as cloud storage. That
Speaker 1: just means that you're storing files on some other computer
Speaker 1: systems somewhere. Typically that would be in some sort of
Speaker 1: huge data center, and normally that would mean the files
Speaker 1: were actually on multiple computers throughout the data center, not
Speaker 1: just one, and that's for the purposes of redundancy. That way,
Speaker 1: if one of those computers should fail, you can still
Speaker 1: access your files. So if you were to visit one
Speaker 1: of these giant data centers, first of all, you would
Speaker 1: noticed that the air conditioning system is on overdrive to
Speaker 1: keep the computers cool enough to operate at maximum efficiency.
Speaker 1: You would also notice just row upon row upon row
Speaker 1: of server stacks, and each of those servers would represent
Speaker 1: a device that could be processing information or storing information
Speaker 1: for customers and your own personal photos. Let's say that
Speaker 1: you're visiting the data center that belongs to the company
Speaker 1: that offers up an online photo album service that you use.
Speaker 1: You would probably discover, if such a thing were possible,
Speaker 1: that your photos existed on multiple computers within that data center,
Speaker 1: and multiple copies of each photo would be on different
Speaker 1: uh would be within that data center, they would be
Speaker 1: on different servers, not multiple copies on the same server,
Speaker 1: but a copy might be on server A, and another
Speaker 1: one might be on server M, and another one might
Speaker 1: be on server B seventeen, that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of that is if one of those
Speaker 1: machines should fail, you would be able to get your
Speaker 1: images anyway, because it's got this redundant system. If you
Speaker 1: don't use redundancy, you're pretty much playing chicken with fate.
Speaker 1: It's not a great idea anyway. You probably use some
Speaker 1: form of cloud storage fairly regularly, so it could be
Speaker 1: a photo album that's a very popular one that backs
Speaker 1: up all images that you might take with your smartphone. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of smartphones come with this just as part
Speaker 1: and parcel with the smartphone itself, where you have a
Speaker 1: setting where it's automatically uploading these images to a server
Speaker 1: bank somewhere so that you can access it wherever you are.
Speaker 1: Even if you were to change phones, you would still
Speaker 1: be able to access those images because they would be
Speaker 1: associated with your account, not with the hardware itself. Not
Speaker 1: very common feature. Or you might use something like Google Drive,
Speaker 1: which allows you to upload files to Google servers or
Speaker 1: a very specific service within the Google Drive realm, the
Speaker 1: Google Suite realm, like Google Docs, where you can actually
Speaker 1: create documents or spreadsheets or presentations, all of which live
Speaker 1: on the cloud and not on your personal computer, unless
Speaker 1: you choose to download a copy, which you can do. Now,
Speaker 1: that last example gives a little hint of what else
Speaker 1: cloud computing can do, because not just you can't. It's
Speaker 1: not just storing information. You can let you run an
Speaker 1: application or program on another computer, which means your own
Speaker 1: computer does not have to dedicate a lot of processing
Speaker 1: power to that job. Instead, all you have to do
Speaker 1: is run the program that connects you to that online service,
Speaker 1: and frequently that's something as simple as web browser, So
Speaker 1: your web browser becomes the interface with the programs you're using.
Speaker 1: So with docs services like Google Docs or Microsoft Office
Speaker 1: three and the one drive Microsoft product, it's all about
Speaker 1: creating documents. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: There are companies that offer deep and complex services, some
Speaker 1: catering to specific industries or processes. Now I have a
Speaker 1: little bit more to say about the history of cloud computing,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: The power of cloud computing is that it gives users
Speaker 1: a chance to leverage computing power they might otherwise never
Speaker 1: have access to. So for businesses, it can mean being
Speaker 1: able to scale processes smoothly while the business grows. So
Speaker 1: instead of spending a lot of money buying powerful computers
Speaker 1: or setting up your own data centers, the business can
Speaker 1: become customers of one or more cloud computing service operators
Speaker 1: and offload all of that work to a different company
Speaker 1: and thus scale up faster. Because you know, every time
Speaker 1: you would grow as a company, there would be kind
Speaker 1: of the stop start situation where you would need to
Speaker 1: build out your infrastructure to make it larger and more
Speaker 1: robust to deal with all that growth, But then you
Speaker 1: would end up filling that right. If your business continues
Speaker 1: to grow, you would eventually hit that that limit that
Speaker 1: your new infrastructure can handle, and then you have to
Speaker 1: do it all over again. And this is a very
Speaker 1: complex process at times, like if your business gets really
Speaker 1: really big, with enormous departments underneath that business, each of
Speaker 1: those departments having its own needs, then it quickly can
Speaker 1: become unmanageable unless you have really got your act together.
Speaker 1: So what these services tend to do is make it
Speaker 1: much easier for companies to scale as they grow. This
Speaker 1: is particularly important in today's business world where you've got
Speaker 1: all these startup companies, a lot of which are begun
Speaker 1: by people who are first time business owners. Right. These
Speaker 1: are entrepreneurs who came up with an idea. It was
Speaker 1: a really good idea, it resonates with their customers, they
Speaker 1: launch it, it becomes way more popular than they were
Speaker 1: necessarily prepared to handle at the beginning. They grow very rapidly,
Speaker 1: and that can be the doom of a small company.
Speaker 1: A small company can actually collapse because it was growing
Speaker 1: so fast that uncontrolled growth can mean that people make
Speaker 1: bad decisions about where they need to put their money
Speaker 1: in order to sustain the company as well as to
Speaker 1: continue to grow. So these services are what allow companies
Speaker 1: like that to kind of not worry so much about
Speaker 1: that part of their business. It can be put into
Speaker 1: the hands of another company that specializes in those UH processes,
Speaker 1: which frequently can be customized to the specific customer, so
Speaker 1: it's not like a one size fits all approach. But
Speaker 1: the whole point of it is that the business owners
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about all that themselves. They can
Speaker 1: actually work and partner with these other companies to handle
Speaker 1: some of that while they the business owners continue to
Speaker 1: concentrate on the very core of the business itself. So
Speaker 1: that's why cloud computing has become such a huge deal.
Speaker 1: It is an enabler for other companies to grow. Not
Speaker 1: to mention, it is also a very useful tool for
Speaker 1: the average person. I use cloud computing all the time.
Speaker 1: I use it for creating my documents at work, but
Speaker 1: I also use it for my home stuff, Like if
Speaker 1: I want to do a personal project, I use cloud
Speaker 1: computing for that because I can access that information wherever
Speaker 1: I am by logging into the associated account and then
Speaker 1: using whatever computer I'm on to access that information. Very
Speaker 1: very convenient. Uh. But that's just a high level overview
Speaker 1: of what cloud computing is. And there are some questions
Speaker 1: that come up, or at least should come up, when
Speaker 1: you hear about this model. Among them are questions of ownership,
Speaker 1: because if your documents, files, and processes live on someone
Speaker 1: else's machines, who owns that stuff. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of confusing terms of service out there that seem to
Speaker 1: suggest your handing over ownership of your stuff to these
Speaker 1: third parties, but that can be a little a little misleading.
Speaker 1: I'll cover that a little bit more later on. But
Speaker 1: there are other questions too. If the service were to
Speaker 1: go out of business. Let's say that you have relied
Speaker 1: upon a service that's holding up your back end operations
Speaker 1: of your business. If that service goes out of this,
Speaker 1: what happens to your organization? If it's cloud storage to
Speaker 1: your files go away forever? Would you end up collapsing
Speaker 1: right behind the service provider? Because that would become a
Speaker 1: domino effect, right if a major cloud service operator were
Speaker 1: to run into serious financial problems, maybe there's a terrible scandal,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a data breach, maybe something happens that just
Speaker 1: affects that company at a fundamental level. What does that
Speaker 1: do to the customers? Does that does it cripple multiple
Speaker 1: other businesses? Could you see an entire, attire swath of
Speaker 1: companies collapse as a result of a provider collapsing? And
Speaker 1: then there's the issue of security itself. Can you, as
Speaker 1: a customer of a cloud computing service operator be sure
Speaker 1: that your information, that your processes, that your infrastructure in
Speaker 1: some cases are safe from bad actors? After all, if
Speaker 1: the cloud computing operator is a really big one, it's
Speaker 1: probably a really attractive target for hackers. I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about some of those questions a bit later, But first
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the evolution of cloud computing itself,
Speaker 1: because it goes back a bit further than a lot
Speaker 1: of people think. The term cloud computing for the average
Speaker 1: person became kind of a big buzzword around two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand ten or so, and when it first popped
Speaker 1: up in general use, it caused some confusion, so much
Speaker 1: so that I actually got an assignment from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works to write more than a dozen articles for the
Speaker 1: website at that time, and it was covering stuff like
Speaker 1: cloud computing, grid computing, utility computing, and related terms to
Speaker 1: help clarify things. Those are the days now. The actual
Speaker 1: term cloud computing goes back more than a decade before
Speaker 1: it became a buzzword on the average streets of the world,
Speaker 1: right like before the average person was aware of what
Speaker 1: cloud computing think was, the term was already in use
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. But the concept of cloud
Speaker 1: computing is even older than that. So to understand the
Speaker 1: birth of cloud computing, we actually have to go back
Speaker 1: before the era of personal computers, even before the era
Speaker 1: where businesses, big businesses, we're using computers for the average employee.
Speaker 1: We're going all the way back to the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Not at that time computers were mainframe computers. They were giant,
Speaker 1: expensive machines that took up the better part of a room,
Speaker 1: sometimes the better part of a floor of a building.
Speaker 1: This would not be practical to have as a computer
Speaker 1: that one person would use, right, it's so big and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have multiple people use a computer,
Speaker 1: and you need to have multiple computers, then you would
Speaker 1: be dedicating floors of your buildings to just the just
Speaker 1: a few computers. It's it was not an efficient means.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that was one of the big problems
Speaker 1: with the computers early on. It wasn't there uh their
Speaker 1: processing power, or their storage capacity or anything that The
Speaker 1: problem was, how do you make this powerful machine efficient?
Speaker 1: How do you best make use of its capabilities? Because
Speaker 1: if it's so large and if only one person can
Speaker 1: use it at a time, then you've got limitations on
Speaker 1: what the computer can do, just based upon human limitations.
Speaker 1: There's only so much a human can do with a
Speaker 1: computer like that, and it meant that there were very
Speaker 1: few use cases for a computer that were compelling enough
Speaker 1: to to really uh justify the expense of one. The
Speaker 1: solution in the nineties sixties was to create computer terminals,
Speaker 1: which typically consisted of a workstation that has like a
Speaker 1: keyboard and maybe some other input devices, and then an
Speaker 1: output device like a display. The terminal wasn't in of
Speaker 1: itself a computer, It was more of an interface for
Speaker 1: accessing the main frame computer. So you still have a
Speaker 1: centralized computer, but then you would have one or more
Speaker 1: term annals that would allow users to interface with the computer,
Speaker 1: and then, when paired with a strategy called time sharing,
Speaker 1: a main frame could support multiple terminals. This concept was
Speaker 1: first described by John Backus in nineteen fifty four, but
Speaker 1: it took several years for someone to come up with
Speaker 1: a practical means of enabling it, and in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one there was a computer scientist and the father of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, who proposed that the time sharing model,
Speaker 1: once fully developed, could give rise to the shift of
Speaker 1: computer as a utility service. So, in other words, in
Speaker 1: the future, he would argue, customers could pay to make
Speaker 1: use of a computer's processing power and for specific applications
Speaker 1: as well, so instead of owning a computer, you would
Speaker 1: pay someone else to make use of their computer's abilities
Speaker 1: to complete a task. Uh. Now, this did not first
Speaker 1: see the development of the personal computer, because again, at
Speaker 1: the time, computers were enormous, They were very complicated, they
Speaker 1: were difficult to work with. You had to have a
Speaker 1: very specialized set of knowledge and skills in order to
Speaker 1: work with these computers. So it seemed like it was
Speaker 1: well outside the realm of the average person. People weren't
Speaker 1: thinking in terms of personal computers. So what McCarthy was
Speaker 1: proposing was a model where you would still be able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of a computer's processing power, but you
Speaker 1: would pay on demand. Right, You would pay whenever you
Speaker 1: needed to use a computer, and then in return you
Speaker 1: would get some application run or some computation performed. And
Speaker 1: this would actually become part of the foundation for modern
Speaker 1: cloud computing. While we kind of bypassed this for a while,
Speaker 1: it's come back around. Utility computing is related to cloud computing.
Speaker 1: It's not synonymous, but it is related to it. I've
Speaker 1: got a little bit more to say about cloud computing,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: The development of multi user mainframe solutions was originally funded
Speaker 1: by the Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA, the predecessor
Speaker 1: to DARPA, the research and development arm of the United
Speaker 1: States Department of Defense. They've been responsible for funding tons
Speaker 1: of projects that have been all about pushing technology forward,
Speaker 1: frequently with at least a a an eye toward defense,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily all about that. So ARPA NET is
Speaker 1: a great example, and I'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more in just a minute. But ARPA or DARPA
Speaker 1: as it now is known it changed its name in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies. DARPA has also funded big projects
Speaker 1: that have led to things like robots that can respond
Speaker 1: to various uh crises, like there was a big robotics
Speaker 1: challenge where the robots had to perform a series of
Speaker 1: of different tasks in order to simulate responding to a
Speaker 1: nuclear meltdown scenario, or driverless cars. DARPA has also funded
Speaker 1: a lot of the development behind autonomous vehicles. So back
Speaker 1: in ninety three, the agency ARPA awarded two million dollars
Speaker 1: to m I T to take on what was called
Speaker 1: Project MAC, which was also known as the Project of
Speaker 1: Mathematics and Computation Now. Later on, the acronym was tweaked
Speaker 1: a few different times to mean various things, one of
Speaker 1: which was multiple access computer, which was one aspect of
Speaker 1: Project MAC, but not the only one. The ARPA side
Speaker 1: of the project was headed by a guy named Joseph
Speaker 1: Carl Robnett Licklider, better known as j. C. R or Lick,
Speaker 1: and he had previously served as a professor at m
Speaker 1: I T before joining the Department of Defense. The m
Speaker 1: I T side was originally headed by Robert fano A.
Speaker 1: Project MAC would span many different areas of computer science,
Speaker 1: but the one we're specifically interested in here is time sharing.
Speaker 1: The origins of the time sharing model came out of
Speaker 1: a different project and m I T, but was completed
Speaker 1: as part of Project MAC. Lick Lighter is going to
Speaker 1: pop up again in our discussion in just a second now. Typically,
Speaker 1: time sharing meant that the main frame would devote a
Speaker 1: certain number of processing cycles to each terminal's operations, so
Speaker 1: you could have multiple people using different terminals accessing the
Speaker 1: same mainframe computer, and the main frame would work on
Speaker 1: problems in sequence rather than simultaneously. But computers work very quickly,
Speaker 1: and we humans are relatively slow by comparisons, so on
Speaker 1: casual glance, it looks like one computer is handling all
Speaker 1: the work of all the terminals all at the same time.
Speaker 1: In fact, the reason time sharing works so well is
Speaker 1: that we humans tend to work in short batches or spurts.
Speaker 1: This means that the main frame would be waiting on
Speaker 1: humans more than humans would wait on the main frame,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why one person working on a
Speaker 1: computer is not an efficient use of that computer, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of downtime when you look at the
Speaker 1: accumulation of all the little pauses and breaks humans take.
Speaker 1: So if you could allow multiple people to access the
Speaker 1: same machine at the same time, you can then shift
Speaker 1: the downtime of one user so it becomes the active
Speaker 1: time of another user. And with the right number of users,
Speaker 1: that would maximize the efficiency of the main frame itself.
Speaker 1: It would essentially be working constantly, and in turn that
Speaker 1: would justify the massive cost of owning and operating a
Speaker 1: mainframe computer. Time sharing also opened up the possibility of
Speaker 1: allowing a business to make use of a computer owned
Speaker 1: by someone else. The business would just have to have
Speaker 1: access to a terminal for the main frame in question,
Speaker 1: so you could argue that's the very foundation of the
Speaker 1: concept of cloud computing. Lick Lighter is one of the
Speaker 1: people responsible for the formation of the Arpanett project. Ar
Speaker 1: Ponnet's goal was to create means for different computers and
Speaker 1: different locations to share information with one another and therefore
Speaker 1: resources between each other, even if the computers were of
Speaker 1: different make and model, which was not a trivial task
Speaker 1: as different mainframes relied on very different computer architectures and
Speaker 1: different operating systems, which made them incompatible with one another
Speaker 1: in normal use, so it's like they're speaking totally different languages.
Speaker 1: Lig Lighter envisioned what he called an intergalactic computer network,
Speaker 1: and in this vision, link Letters saw everyone in the
Speaker 1: world having access to computers and information through an interconnected
Speaker 1: network of machines. Essentially, he was proposing the Internet. The
Speaker 1: Arpanet project launched in nineteen sixty nine. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, another big development took place, which was the
Speaker 1: evolution of machine virtualization. In the nineteen sixties, we use
Speaker 1: the term virtualization to refer to the ability to allow
Speaker 1: multiple users to access the same machine more or less
Speaker 1: sim sultaneously, as it was almost as if each user
Speaker 1: had access to his or her own virtual computer. So
Speaker 1: essentially it was another kind of word for time sharing,
Speaker 1: But in the nineties seventies the meaning began to shift
Speaker 1: as computer scientists found ways to create virtual machines within
Speaker 1: a computer itself. The computer runs software that allows it
Speaker 1: to partition off assets to run an instance, as if
Speaker 1: it had a second machine inside the main machine. It
Speaker 1: takes up some of the primary machines abilities, some of
Speaker 1: its processing abilities, some of its storage. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: like you've just divided one main frame into two computers,
Speaker 1: but you're doing it on the software level, not the
Speaker 1: hardware level, and you could even run different operating systems
Speaker 1: on the same computer. This way, you could create essentially
Speaker 1: what amounted to an emulator that would allow software mint
Speaker 1: for a different type of computer to run on another computer.
Speaker 1: We do this today. There are a lot of computers
Speaker 1: out there that run uh different operating systems simultaneously, and
Speaker 1: you can switch back and forth. And it's essentially this
Speaker 1: virtualization software that allows the computer to divide itself up
Speaker 1: so that some of its assets are dedicated to running
Speaker 1: one operating system and the other assets are dedicated to
Speaker 1: running another operating system. So you might have Linux and
Speaker 1: Windows for example, or Max had virtualization that allows you
Speaker 1: to run Windows on a Mac. So that way you
Speaker 1: could run Windows based software on the Windows operating system
Speaker 1: platform as if it were a Windows PC, or you
Speaker 1: could switch over to the Max side and run Mac
Speaker 1: software that was designed to run on the Mac operating system.
Speaker 1: Because remember, different programs meant for specific operating systems are
Speaker 1: not interoperable with other operating systems. So virtualization began to
Speaker 1: take on a slightly different word, different meaning rather in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. But it also meant that you could
Speaker 1: create a virtual machine that someone could access, and that's
Speaker 1: another one of those little founding notions of cloud computing.
Speaker 1: Technology would continue to evolve. Our bonnet would pave the
Speaker 1: way for the Internet, which sort of began to coalesce
Speaker 1: in the late seventies early eighties. Uh. The Web, of course,
Speaker 1: would be another evolution of that. You would start, you know,
Speaker 1: a layer on top of the Internet. The Web and
Speaker 1: the Internet are not synonymous, they're not the same thing.
Speaker 1: But the Web is a layer that exists on top
Speaker 1: of the Internet, and it's frequently the way most of
Speaker 1: us access the Internet, and we tend to access it
Speaker 1: using the web and email. Those are two big ways.
Speaker 1: And then we also have apps which can access the Internet.
Speaker 1: They often have a web like interface, so a lot
Speaker 1: of times we associate that with the Web, but they
Speaker 1: could be completely independent of the Web. So we also
Speaker 1: access the Internet through apps, but I think most us
Speaker 1: kind of associate the Web with the Internet as being
Speaker 1: almost one and the same, although you should keep in
Speaker 1: mind that's not exactly true. Anyway, people before the Web
Speaker 1: would call into other computers using modems, uh, and they
Speaker 1: would upload or download files from them. They could do
Speaker 1: that on bulletin board systems. I've talked about those recently,
Speaker 1: but then also later on through Internet servers, you could
Speaker 1: use things like tell net to log in remotely into
Speaker 1: another machine. Guys have got a lot more I want
Speaker 1: to say about cloud computing, but in order to get
Speaker 1: these episodes out properly, I'm going to cut this one
Speaker 1: a little short because Hotel WiFi makes it really hard
Speaker 1: to upload larger sound files. So we're gonna rejoin this
Speaker 1: conversation with a discussion about some other forms of computing
Speaker 1: that are similar to cloud computing, like grid computing, and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk a little bit about what cloud computing
Speaker 1: is used for today. Some of the more recent developments
Speaker 1: in the world and uh then we'll conclude before we
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