The Onion is making fun of big tech companies who talk about “the cloud.” This is fascinating to me. You know a topic has completely saturated our culture when it becomes satirized in mainstream media like this.. I love it. I spend a lot of time deflating hype for my clients and this tongue in cheek shot at big companies that are slapping a logo sticker on their old school products is excellent!
Most people don’t care about the guts of IT. Sure, technology certainly plays a huge role in the main streams of popular culture, and billions of folks love gadgets and computers. But very few people know or care much about what happens behind their screens. They have no concern about the ‘plumbing’ of the internet, the structure of their data storage systems, nor the application platforms upon which virtually all of the civilized world depends for their productivity and entertainment. Nor should they!
I don’t really care about the organizational structure of Tim Hortons, I just want my coffee in the morning. I don’t care about the details of the manufacturing process that went into my hockey equipment, I just want it to fit and keep me safe. When it comes to the inner workings of our industry – most people have no occasion to care … Until recently.
The fact that The Onion has grabbed hold of the hype around cloud talk definitely says something about the state of our industry. This kind of exposure is likely due to all the Microsoft and Apple messaging surrounding cloud-based consumer services. Now the wider culture has taken an interest in some of the deeper aspects of our industry.
I’m hopeful that this kind of satire symbolizes something important about the widespread perception of all things “cloud”. Once something has been over-exposed, analyzed, and ultimately satirized … That’s when the varnish fades, the fog clears, and people can begin to see a “fad” for what it really is.
