Let me ask you a question. 

When was the last time you didn’t need the internet to carry out a task? 

It’s okay if you can’t remember; it only goes to show just how much technology has interwoven into the very fabric of our lives.

Technology has become an integral part of our everyday existence, from smart mobile phones to smart appliances to smart automobiles and smart houses to even smart factories. 

In 2021, with the world still reeling from the pandemic that ravaged the globe just the year before, technology has been a crucial part of man’s survival. Face it, life in 2021 is drastically different from how we lived five years ago. 

Every area of life was affected by the pandemic, and some still are today. From sports to film, to education, and even industry, the pandemic hit every single sphere and forced us to adapt and improvise.

Now, all over the world, digital is the new normal. Civilization is slowly evolving and progressing to becoming more digitally inclusive. Many activities have become digitized to bridge the chasms caused by the pandemic and return life to a semblance of what it once was. 

There is more internet reliance than there ever was, online shopping is on an all-time high, multiple streaming platforms are springing up all over the place, delivering content for viewers at home. 

Even in the workplace, workers are becoming more and more remote as responsibilities are decentralized, meetings are increasingly virtual, and social media has become a crucial medium for keeping in touch with family, friends and meeting new people.

Living in 2021 means living digital, which isn’t bad when you think about it. It is now easier to do certain activities like shopping and seeing movies. Social media gives you access to millions worldwide that share similar sentiments with you, expanding your human interest, and learning has also been made a lot easier. 

Many businesses and industries have also digitized their networks, making them easier to access from the safety and comfort of your home.

With the increased information being transferred on the internet daily, shouldn’t we be worried that all this might cause the internet to overload and shut down? Nope! And I’ll tell you why.

Two words... cloud technology.

No, this doesn’t mean people fly up into the sky and store information. Quite simply, Cloud technology is like having a storage device for everything digital, but on the internet. Imagine the internet was a train station. 

Cloud technology would be the lockers at the station. 

We can access and store data via the internet with cloud technology rather than on a memory stick or hard drive. You can store all of your data strictly through the web, meaning you get to have all that free memory space on your mobile devices and computers.

There are two types of clouds, public and private. As you probably guessed, public clouds are open to everyone, but private clouds are usually exclusive to a specific company. They offer personalized storage and security services to individuals and businesses.

Popular examples of cloud technology can include the famous google drive, iCloud, and even Dropbox, amongst many others. Let’s quickly explore these three, shall we?

• Google Drive: 

Google launched their storage cloud on April 24, 2012, which offered users the ability to store their images, videos, music, documents, pretty much anything on their cloud for free. To make it even easier to store stuff, Google made their drive encompass its other software like docs, sheets, and google slides, making it easy to collaborate, edit and retrieve documents in storage.

With google drive, you get 15gigbyte worth of cloud space for free to do with what you like; google also offers up to 2 terabytes worth of space as a paid option.

• iCloud: 

iCloud is apple’s cloud storage service that was launched on October 12, 2011. On iCloud, you can store your images, videos, music, documents on their remote servers. Data from your mobile devices can also be backed up to the cloud to be retrieved at your convenience.  iCloud also gives users the ability to share their data instantly with other people, be it family or friends, and this is done by linking accounts via airdrop wireless. It also serves as a data sync center for its users. With the information in one place, it is easier to arrange data accordingly.

• Dropbox: 

Founded by MIT students; Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox is also a prime example of cloud technology. It was ranked one of the most successful startups globally and offered users cloud storage space and automatic synchronization of their files. 

In a world becoming increasingly digital, storing those memories close to your heart has also become easy, with cloud technology fast gaining popularity. Now you no longer have to worry about losing that important information. You can just put it on a cloud, and it’ll be fine.

But that’s not all. Do you know social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are also technically clouds? 

A lot of people use social media as a bank for their data and memories. The other day, I got a notification from Facebook reminding me of an image I posted some years ago. I had no idea that image still existed. 

Living in 2021 may be a tad isolated due to the pandemic, but that shouldn’t stop you from living your best life, meeting new people, learning new things and of course, saving those important moments on the cloud so they stay safe for when we can finally put the last year behind us.