Cloud computing and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) may seem like something only
for the IT guys to get excited about, but the ultimate benefit is accruing to
ordinary users. While most day-to-day non-tech folks don't understand the
inner workings of PaaS (nor should they have to), this disruptive system is
bringing in changes that are on the same scale as the early shift from
command-line to GUI.
In the 1996 documentary, "Triumph of the Nerds," Steve Jobs described his
early vision to take the desktop to the masses: "It was very clear to me that
while there were a bunch of hardware hobbyists that could assemble their own
computers... for every one of those, there were a thousand people that
couldn't do that, but wanted to mess around with programming - software
hobbyists." Steve Jobs was a visionary. He knew that his computer needed a
graphical, easy-to-use operating... (more)