Metaphorical Thinking – Introduction
Metaphorical Thinking – the Guest Metaphor
Metaphorical Thinking – the Cloud Metaphors
Metaphorical Thinking – the Web Metaphors
The ethereal, shape-shifting quality of clouds makes them a perfect instrument for concepts that apply to metaphors, meditation, behavioural science, or computer science.
I am on cloud nine.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
I have my head in the clouds.
Cloud Computing
In the remarkable Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, clouds are defined as “instruments of apotheosis and epiphany” and “clouds were connected with the symbolism of WATER and consequently with that of fertility”.
Touching on the epiphany concept, Thich Nhat Hanh says in his book, The Art of Living:
Once, a young child asked me, ‘How does it feel to be dead?’ This is a very good, very deep question. I used the example of a cloud to explain to her about birth, death, and continuation. I explained that a cloud can never die.
A cloud can only become something else, like rain or snow or hail.
When you are a cloud, you feel like a cloud.
And when you become rain, you feel like rain.
And when you become snow, you feel like the snow.
Remanifestation is wonderful. The challenge is to recognize that thing in its new form. Although we can no longer see it, the cloud has not died. Perhaps it turned into rain, which then became the water that flowed out of my faucet and into my kettle, filling my cup with tea.
The cloud has not died. It has become tea.
Thus, the cloud becomes a central part of Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea that we inter-are with one another.
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper.
The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either.
Thich Nhat Hanh
A talk about this idea, “A cloud never dies”, can be found in this video where Thich Nhat Hanh cheekily mentions we are 70% clouds.
In his extraordinary Human Behavioral Biology course, Robert Sapolsky mentioned, in the first lecture, James Gleick’s Chaos book.
This is what Robert Sapolsky says:
“Chaos, year, after year, after year, in this class provokes the strongest opinions. A quarter of the people decide it is the most irritating, irrelevant thing that could possibly have been assigned in the class and hate it. About half the people never quite figure out what’s up with it. And a quarter of people, their life is transformed. They no longer have to meditate. They are at peace. At peace, I tell you.
Because what this book does, it introduces this whole radically different way of thinking about biology, taking apart a world of reductionism. For 500 years, we all have been using a very simple model for thinking about living systems which is, if you want to understand something that’s complicated, you break it apart into its little pieces. And once you understand the little pieces and put them back together, you will understand the complex thing.
And what Chaos as an entire field is about – and this was pretty much the first book that was meant for the lay public about it – what Chaos shows is that’s how you fix clocks. That’s not how you fix behaviours. That’s not how you understand behaviours. Behaviour is not like a clock. Behaviour is like a cloud. And you don’t understand rainfall by breaking a cloud down into its component pieces and glueing them back together.”
The link Sapolsky makes between behaviour and clouds is a profound one. Just like a cloud, behaviour isn’t a fixed, predictable entity. It is complex and ever-changing, as its outcomes are only sometimes linear or immediately apparent. In both cases – clouds and behaviours – the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Not only do clouds signify transformation and interconnectedness, as discussed by Thich Nhat Hanh, but they also represent the beautiful complexity and apparent randomness found within nature and our behaviours.
In computer science, cloud computing is a metaphor for remote server-side storage synchronizing with client-side data. Wikipedia mentions that for networks of computing equipment or platforms for distributed computing, the cloud metaphor implies that the specifics of how the endpoints are connected are irrelevant to understanding the big picture.
But what is this fuss about applications being “in the cloud”? How did the cloud become a metaphor for running code?
As a software engineer, I first draw a diagram of what I want to achieve when building things. Software developers put symbols as placeholders for the different things we need to develop (think of drawing a house and using a rectangle symbol as the entrance door). Clouds are easy to draw and can have any shape or size. We only see the outlines of a cloud, and we don’t have to know the internal mechanics of a cloud. Is it any surprise that networks of computing equipment or platforms for distributed computing found a perfect metaphor in clouds?
When we hear about services being in the cloud, it means accessing those services over the Internet. A cloud data center, where the magic of cloud computing happens, is nothing more than a building of computers or servers. We do not need to know any implementation details such as how these computers work, where they are located, how many they are, or worrying about the maintenance infrastructure.
For example, when we buy a new laptop and log in to social media sites, we immediately see our friends and messages because these data sets aren’t stored on our physical devices but on the clouds of social media sites.
By using cloud computing, software providers moved from providing their software on CDs (once-in-a-lifetime payment) to subscription-based software (monthly or yearly fees). Think of Microsoft Office transitioning from traditional license sales to a subscription-based model called Office 365. Office 365 is a typical example of software as a service(SaaS), where users can access applications hosted in the cloud through a web browser.
How does cloud computing work? The core idea is brilliant in its simplicity: sell or rent what is not used. Unused network computer capacity (imagine the financial value of thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers staying idle) is bought by companies according to their needs. Large companies that use a cloud server might need 60 – 80% of a cloud data center space. A small company might only need 5% of the remaining space.
One of the biggest influences of cloud computing is what money came to represent today: numbers stored somewhere in the elusive cloud. More often than not, we no longer use physical money, as we transfer cash from our accounts to other accounts when we use our credit or debit cards. Sure, online banking existed long before cloud computing, but with cloud computing, anyone with an online card can buy or rent almost anything over the Internet.
The most significant influence of cloud computing is that it created a cultural paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions.
Startups from any place on the planet didn’t have to worry about infrastructure overhead (server capacity planning, elastically scaling, automated updates on software, 24-7 availability, fewer costs, etc.) and could focus instead on their business plan. Thus, cloud computing removed apparently immovable entry barriers, and wealth could be created in otherwise economically disadvantaged locations.
Clouds are not just whimsical shapes floating in the sky nor mere scientific wonders; they are metaphors of change, transformation, and a symbol of interconnectedness. They are in our language, our technologies, and in ourselves. Next time you gaze upon the sky, remember to smile at the clouds within and around you.