When I first heard of the concept of a Communication Cloud representing a simple way to diagrammatically represent communication as a utility on our control drawings, I was impressed. This was a great way to present the complex communication technology that provided us simple transportation functionality.
The audience did not have to understand in full detail what happened inside this complex cloud. All we had to do was connect information flow to the communication cloud and exit the other side of the cloud somewhere else in the world and our data was there. Who knows, or even cares, how many times our data had been converted to how many forms to get there. The cloud concept is easy for all of us to conceive because radio and television “came from the clouds” originally, too.