CircleID

Yes, "cloud computing" is gibberish, but it should not be dismissed on that basis. Many new ideas start out as gibberish. Let me share a fine quotation from Paul Feyerabend's Against Method (3rd ed., p.17):

It is often taken for granted that a clear and distinct understanding of new ideas precedes, and should precede, their formulation and their institutional expression. First, we have an idea, or a problem, then we act, i.e. either speak, or build, or destroy. Yet this is certainly not the way in which small children develop. They use words, they combine them, they play with them, until they grasp a meaning that has so far been beyond their reach. And the initial playful activity is an essential prerequisite of the final act of understanding. There is no reason why this mechanism should cease to function in the adult. We must expect, for example, that the idea of liberty could be made clear only by means of the very same actions, which were supposed to create liberty. Creation of a thing, and creation plus full understanding of a correct idea of the thing, are very often parts of one and the same indivisible process and cannot be separated without bringing the process to a stop.

The "gibberish" of cloud computing will slowly resolve itself into more concrete ideas as we figure out exactly what it is and how it differs from what we do now. Either that, or it will fade away. But don't judge an emerging idea by its gibberish: give it a chance to refine itself (and its terminology) first.