The cloud-shaped future of life online

IF YOU’VE ever posted a picture on Facebook, sent an email using Gmail or bought a book on Amazon, you’re already a cloud user. But that’s just the start, says Christopher Barnatt, who brings admirable clarity to this thoroughly nebulous topic. Barnatt gives a detailed guide to the cloud, including a useful list of sites where you can try it for yourself. He argues persuasively that businesses that ignore it do so at their peril: the financial and environmental costs of running their own computer centres will be just too great. And he paints a fascinating, if relentlessly optimistic, vision of the cloud-enabled future.…