"Living in the cloud" offers so many benefits over the old ways it's just silly. No longer do we have to plug in to sync our calendars and contacts and photos and music. It all just happens, without a second thought, over the network. You don't have to worry about it, you don't have to remember to do it, it just works.

Thanks to modern standards, it works across devices too. I have access to the same email, contacts, calendars, and files on my BlackBerry as I do on my iPhone. They sync through my Gmail accounts, through Dropbox, and other services. All I have to do is log in, tweak things if I really want to, and let the apps, services, and servers do their thing.

Defining "the cloud" Let's define what exactly is meant by "the cloud". For the vast majority of us, the most interaction we'll have with cloud services is through a connected client. These clients can be integrated into the operating system, an installable app, or merely a web interface. The "cloud" itself is a combination of server-based applications, a platform that those run on, and the physical server infrastructure itself that makes all of this run. The vast majority of consumer cloud use involves the passage of data from device to server and from server to device. The client side monitors for new files or changes made to existing files and sends that data back to the server, where it is integrated with the existing data already stored. The server then takes that new data and pushes it out to other devices connected to that account, keeping the entire network of devices up to date. The advantage comes in the form of redundancy - data is distributed across multiple servers and multiple devices, making it difficult for the failure of one device to result in permanent data loss.

Even with a brand new device, the configuration and set-up time is minimal, and it all works in the background. I lost my smartphone? No worries - thanks to the cloud I can both restore from a backup onto a new smartphone and remotely wipe my old one (and thankfully I've set a password on that one so I'm not worrying about that data being compromised before I can get to a computer). All I need are a few passwords to my accounts.

The best part about living in the cloud is that it's all software-based and there are multiple parties working on different systems and services. I'm not wholly dependent on updates from my device manufacturer (and approval from the carrier) to get new functionality. An update can be made server-side for a cloud service and I benefit.

It's not just the future - the cloud is already here. You can't fight it, and you shouldn't fight it.

Developers, manufacturers, and even carriers are focused today on the cloud. It's not just the future - the cloud is already here. You can't fight it, and you shouldn't fight it. You might not think you need the cloud, but you do. Learn to embrace it, love it, and adapt to it.

It's like any advancement of human technology. Fire, electricty, personal computing, the internet… once you're used to it, you won't be able to fathom how you were ever able to live without it.