Pisco Sour

McKinsey & Company released a report, “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” yesterday that claims that large corporations could lose money through the adoption of cloud computing. The report paints cloud computing as over-hyped and maintains that cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) overcharge large companies for a service the companies could do better on their own. The study also says that while cloud computing is optimal for small and medium-sized businesses, large companies will spend less if using traditional data centers. Virtualization is the optimal way to go, says McKinsey, and by implementing virtualization in-house, corporations can reduce costs when factoring in depreciation and tax write-offs. Virtualization, which McKinsey says can boost server utilization to 18% from 10%, lets you treat one machine like many, by carving the servers into many virtual engines, so that software can maximize power from one machine and add scalability. Not only is this cost-effective for companies, but cloud computing takes advantage of virtualization.

The report makes some thought-provoking points but neglects to address a few key trends that are occurring in cloud server services. Innovation is rapidly changing in the cloud. The space is still very much a work in progress and big cloud computing services, like AWS, Google, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, are regularly coming out with different products. As these companies throw their hats into the “cloud computing ring,” AWS will face increased competition in the market and could cause prices to go down to fight for market share.

In this particular case, a couple of Domino’s employees have filmed themselves doing gross things to food that’ll probably get served to customers, and posted it to YouTube. Due to reactions and some quite clever investigative work of appalled viewers, both were promptly fired.

For the rest of us, it sadly shows that these things (hopefully, very rarely) do happen in restaurants. It also shows that, luckily, people who are dumb enough to do something like that are also incapable of understanding that posting something on YouTube means that the entire world can see it. Kudos to that.

So here’s my question: What exactly is this? What do you call MadV’s project? It isn’t quite a documentary; it isn’t exactly a conversation or a commentary, either. It’s some curious mongrel form. And it would have been inconceivable before the Internet and cheap webcams—prohibitively expensive and difficult to pull off.

This is what’s so fascinating about online video culture. DIY tools for shooting, editing, and broadcasting video aren’t just changing who uses the medium. They’re changing how we use it. We’re developing a new language of video—forms that let us say different things and maybe even think in different ways.