Today’s data empires are not necessarily interested in land, but they are interested—at least allegorically—in air. If there is one metaphor that captures the structure of this nascent empire, it is that of “the cloud.” Essentially, cloud computing enables on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources. Because information is stored on third-party servers, not on the owner’s computer, the data is said to live “in the cloud.” More than just a convenient and evocative metaphor, the concept of the cloud operates at different levels to help shape our social realities.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 171