For an understanding of new technology and where it will lead us, there’s no book like Mark Mills’ The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s, just out from Encounter Books. Mills, a physicist, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where I used to work. His new 400-plus page book shows how the Cloud has enabled new technology to develop in a broad variety of ways.
Back in 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology defined cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." Over a decade later, Mills explains why it is “society’s newest and fastest-growing infrastructure.”
Just as the Roaring 1920s led to a rise in living standards, Mills predicts that the advances in the 2020s from the Cloud, constructed from silicon building blocks, will do the same. Future generations will be exponentially better off than people living today—and the Cloud is an essential ingredient of this progress.
The confluence of three key technology spheres—machines, information, and materials—is behind innovation of new products and services. In the 20th century, after policy-driven setbacks due to the Great Depression and World War II, people benefited from machines such as automobiles, power plants, and manufacturing plants. Radio, television, and telephones gave them information. Materials such as plastics and high strength concrete enabled new products.
These same technological spheres are working in the Roaring 2020s to produce new innovations. For machines, the world has 3-D printers, semi-conductor chips, and nanotechnology, For information, we have microprocessors and vast data centers. For materials, we have algorithms that design new pharmaceuticals and bioelectronics to be customised to individual needs. All these are essential components of the Cloud.
The Cloud holds the key to many as yet undetermined opportunities. Take vehicular transportation, for example. The Cloud’s infrastructure could enable the installation of a virtual computer in each car that would enable the development of Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), where cars brake before they hit something. Once automakers learn how to make ADAS reliable, it will be easier to develop driverless cars.
Air taxis would be practically impossible without the Cloud. In the next couple of years it is likely that Joby air taxis will be able to serve customers, enabling them to travel the length of Los Angeles in about 15 minutes for the price per mile of a Lyft. The logistics of finding the four passengers for the Joby air taxi, and linking them to Uber rideshare for their first and last miles of their trip, are viable with the Cloud.
Similarly, e-commerce, with truck drivers making millions more trips to people’s homes, depends on the Cloud. Mills writes, “the advent of Cloud-enabled truck-transported home delivery from any consumer “device” became the hallmark of convenience that was forced on millions because of the Great Lockdowns. But it was a trend that was well underway as an ascendant consumer shopping preference.”
As well as trucks for e-commerce, freight drones will one day be in the mix. Companies such as Zipline are already using the benefits of the Cloud to deliver pharmaceuticals and additional goods in other countries. When U.S. regulatory hurdles are cleared and America is also able to benefit from this technology, e-commerce will be even faster.
Education is another major beneficiary of Cloud technology. Zoom technology enables people to train for careers by taking classes virtually. Many are able to attend classes on campus, face to face with professors and fellow-students. But for others this is not possible, and long-distance education opens vast educational avenues. Mills devotes three chapters to education.
I’ve left the most obvious for last: the possibilities for entertainment that the Cloud provides. Back in the old days, when Netflix started, the company would mail people DVDs of movies. When the DVDs were returned, Netflix would mail out others. Now these movies can be streamed online, and Netflix is into making movies as well as showing them. Video games, athletic events, and reality shows are all beneficiaries of this new technology.
The Cloud Revolution takes some time to read. It’s 438 pages, and lacks an adequate index (no mention of automobiles, cars, vehicles, or transportation, for instance.) But it’s time well spent. As up-and-coming vocalist Beccs sings in a stunning new version of Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now, “It’s clouds’ illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.” I didn’t know either before I read The Cloud Revolution.
