Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet, replacing local hardware ownership with on-demand access to remote infrastructure. The model shifts computing from capital expenditure to operating expense, but it also creates a structural epistemic dependency: the user loses visibility into the infrastructure that supports their operations, and with that visibility goes the capacity to diagnose failure.

Cloud computing enables organizational scaling without proportional infrastructure investment, but it also homogenizes the technical stack across competitors who all build on the same substrate. The result is a pattern of platform dependency: efficiency rises, diversity falls, and systemic risk concentrates.