While I was sitting with a friend this afternoon at on campus Summit, she received an email which read,“As you know, there is a nation-wide cloud outage, and Handshake is not working. In order to alleviate any concerns that you have, we are extending the Davidson Impact Fellowship application deadline to at least tomorrow evening at 11:59 pm. Please stay tuned to our social media accounts for any additional updates.” The rhetoric of the email immediately reminded me of this class, so I figured that this would make a pretty appropriate “Sightings” post!
After doing more research about this nation-wide cloud outage (which I had no idea existed until my friend showed me this email), I discovered that Amazon.com was the culprit that triggered this lengthy problem on its cloud storage service, which caused widespread frustration among other online services. Reactions to this occurrence spread like wildfire onto outlets such as Twitter, with the hashtag, #awsoutage becoming an instant trend. Below are some screenshots of some humorous tweets in response to this problem:
In an article written earlier today about the issue, Ángel González states, “In Amazon’s case the cloud service may have been so robust that it lulled users into an exaggerated sense of security, and yielded a bigger shock upon failure.” This comment reminded me of our conversation in class about the “technological imaginary” and the binaries we created about what we imagine technology to be versus what it really is. We imagine technology to be safe, secure, and ideally, unbreakable. However, situations like this nation-wide cloud outage obstruct the trust we normally attribute to our devices. I find it especially interesting how the people who were frustrated about this issue took their complaints to spaces like Twitter, which also exists within the larger cloud. It is almost as if it has become human to turn to technology to express emotions regarding the “death” of other aspects of technology.
Additionally, the wording of the email quoted earlier is also definitely worth some inspection. It begins with “As you know,” which indirectly blurs the division between the technological world and the world we are living in. It was assumed that my friend already knew about the issue because of the interchangeable qualities of real life and technology. We have gotten to the point where digital malfunctions limit what we can do and dictate how we live our lives. Although it appears as if the normal course of operations is back on track, it is important to use this occurrence as a reminder of how much “trust” we put into our devices and how we let the seemingly “secure” parts of technology control our everyday lives.
Works Cited:
González, Ángel. “Site of Amazon’s cloud glitch made it especially disruptive.” The Seattle Times. The Seattle Times Company, 28 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Feb. 2017.