No matter how robust the server clusters are that operate “the cloud”, things will eventually fail. Even if the cloud itself does not fail, something will, especially those fragile little fiber optic lines that construction workers love to chop in half (btw, even in a cloud world, you still need real buildings, built by strong, sweaty, and somewhat ape-like construction workers).

Take the present failure of Google’s services. I wanted to send a text message to a friend, while I can do so from my phone, or my home mail server, those things aren’t in the cloud, and I only have his full SMS address stored on my GMail account (sorry Oscar, I’ll try again in a little bit).