A fiery 2009 manifesto rails against the nascent concept of “the Cloud,” defining it as storing vital data on machines the user neither controls nor administers. The author views any reliance on external, non-owned infrastructure as inherently risky, labeling participants in this arrangement as “suckers.” This perspective stems from a deep distrust of corporate stability and vendor control over personal or professional assets.

Marketing heavily influenced the adoption of the term, which the writer suggests implies a soft, meaningless grandeur designed to obscure hard technical realities. The core technical objection centers on data ownership and permanence; if a provider fails, users lose their work with no recourse from the "technogeeks." This argument predates widespread SaaS adoption, making it a sharp early critique.

Developers should treat cloud services like ephemeral parties, not dependable homes, especially when the service is offered without direct payment. The author strongly advocates maintaining local copies of everything, viewing reliance on ad-supported or free platforms as essentially throwing data into the trash via EULA agreements. Vimeo and Flickr are cited as acceptable only if the user retains the sole copy.

Trusting critical work to entities you cannot audit or guarantee the longevity of is fundamentally unsound engineering practice, regardless of how neat the current technology appears. The writer explicitly warns against accepting services that prevent data export, asserting that technical excuses for lock-in are false justifications for poor design. Data sovereignty matters deeply.