Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the new "it thing" on the internet. I have done a lot of reading up on it, yet still feel I do not fully understand the concept. For it is a strange one, and I am not the best with computers, especially computer lingo. From all my reading up on and analysis of cloud computing I have come to the conclusion that it is where you connect your computer to a giant powerful server or "cloud" such as amazon, google, or facebook, which does all the computing. That allows you to have high end computing power from any speed machine where the speed of calculations is merely based on the connection speed to the cloud. So for example, if you connect your laptop to a "cloud", no matter how low end and slow your laptop, the only thing that matters is your internet speed because it is connecting to a super computer where all the software is loaded off-site. Cloud computing is great for ordinary users in that you can access these sites from any computer and get onto your name/account, as if you were at home/on your own computer. So it makes the internet more accessible and travel friendly. The downside for the ordinary users is that these sites have the ability to blow up huge and become monopolies. In my opinion, the upside is greater than the down. As for start up companies, the upside is that if you make your site under the cloud people will be able to access it from anywhere, allowing them to use it more and you get more traffic. But then again, to get this benefit you have to be under the cloud and compete with the other sites under the cloud, which is a very difficult feat when just starting up. The social dangers of cloud computing or of everyones documents being on the same super computer and being able to simply access them from everywhere, is that people all over the world are becoming more and more technologically advanced; so soon enough people will easily be able to hack onto others' accounts and get their documents. This could cause a huge issue. There are very important and secretive materials on the world wide web, this accesability may bring about major problems.