The pithiest single sentence I have heard so far at the Aspen/Atlantic Ideas Festival, underway now (and chronicled in detail by my Atlantic colleagues Conor Friedersdorf and Alexis Madrigal here and here, plus passim by other staff members):
" 'The cloud' is a dirigible filled with hydrogen, with pictures of clouds painted on the side."
No, this was not former DNI/NSA director Mike McConnell, in a Q-and-A session I was just having with him about cyber-security that was sobering enough, but designer Mickey McManus, of the MAYA firm, arguing that we are collectively cruising for a bruising in entrusting so much of humanity's knowledge and affairs to so few online storage sources. ("This is what we used to call 'client - server' in a fancier version and many fewer providers.")
He had a solution to propose too. Context, details, and all of that another time.
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