人造節日：荒蕪的儀式感

“人造節日”已然成為商家，尤其是電商商家的營銷例湯?！半p十一”、“雙十二”、“6?18”、“女人節”、“5?20”……是所謂“節日必然搞促銷，沒節造節也要搞”。

作為一個跟中國人本來八竿子打不著的節日，“情人節”現在不僅有西洋版、中國版，還有東洋版。

這還算是有據可查的，沒據可查的那就更加信馬由韁了。好多年前我們公司有同事申辦了個“男人節”，日子定在了逆反3月8日的8月3日。這不，現在又有了3月7日“女生節”，可能馬上3月6日該定為“女孩節”了。

有一次我就被節日給幽默到了。當年為了“中國旅游日”到底應該定在哪一天展開了一場大討論。得票很高的幾個選項中有一個是6月16日。原因？諧音“遛一遛”?？上ё詈鬀]遛成，日子定在了5月19日，據說是因為那天是《徐霞客游記》首篇《游天臺山日記》開篇之日。

最近才看了徐浩峰的《師父》。除了是打戲的干巴利落脆，片中讓人印象最深刻的是對儀式感的尊重，規矩里面見方圓。中國的傳統文化里是極其重視儀式感的，可惜因為“不夠洋氣”被人嫌棄。夠洋氣的那一堆又被商家玩變了形，現在更進化到土洋結合愛誰誰。于是，就搞得我們在一堆儀式面前，儀式感反倒成了一種稀缺；在一堆節慶面前，反倒沒有了喜悅的理由。

關于儀式感，最恰如其分的說明出現在《小王子》里面。

小王子在馴養狐貍后的第二天又去看望它。

“你每天最好在相同的時間來，”狐貍說，“比如說，你下午四點鐘來，那么從三點鐘起，我就開始感到幸福。時間越臨近，我就越感到幸福。到了四點鐘的時候，我就會坐立不安；我就會發現幸福的代價。但是，如果你隨便什么時候來，我就不知道在什么時候該準備好我的心情……應當有一定的儀式?！?/p>

“儀式是什么？”小王子問道。

“這也是經常被遺忘的事情?！焙傉f，“它就是使某一天與其他日子不同，使某一時刻與其他時刻不同?！?/p>

儀式感，暗示你必須要認真地去對待這件事。

越是虛頭巴腦不確定的東西越需要儀式感，比如愛情、身份的認同感，舊的在哪里結束，新的又在哪里開始……在看得見摸得著的世界和看不見摸不著的世界之間，儀式如同一條隧道連接兩端。

對于儀式感的需求，每個人都不一樣，但你我都需要儀式感——衣裳、包包、袖扣、發型、紋身、座次、排名、度假、瑜伽、打坐、電影、畫畫、抄經、高爾夫、小劇場、拍賣會、藝術展、周末的足球、一場說走就走的旅行、時代廣場顯示屏、納斯達克的鐘聲……

大多時候，生活的確是平淡無奇又匆匆忙忙，在日子被過成一潭又一潭死水之前，惟有靠一場場儀式擺渡前行。

不走心，儀式只剩下無聊的形式。而泛濫無聊的儀式只能讓我們不配擁有儀式感。

帕斯卡說過：“跪下，動動嘴唇祈禱，你就會相信?！?/p>

跪下？別逗了，都忙著站著把錢掙了呢。（財富中文網）

This is interesting: Apple may be moving a chunk of its iCloud business—you know, that ethereal place where you store your photos and documents— to Google’s cloud, lessening its dependence on Amazon Web Services, according to a report from tech news site CRN that cites unnamed sources.

If true it will be a big boost for the Google Cloud Platform at a time when it is trying to position itself as one of the big three public cloud providers along with market leader AmazonWeb Services and MicrosoftAzure.

In the public cloud model, one company buys and operates huge amounts of compute power, storage and networking bandwidth that it rents out to businesses that do not want to build more of their own infrastructure.

The report comes a week before the Google Next conference, at which the company will likely announce new features and customers for its cloud platform. Diane Greene, the VMwareco-founder who was named as head of Google’s enterprise efforts, will be on hand in her first major public forum since taking that job last November.

From the story:According to the sources, Google executives have told partners that Apple is spending between $400 million and $600 million on Google Cloud Platform, although this couldn’t be independently confirmed. Also unclear is whether this range refers to an annual spending rate or a set amount of capacity.

So that’s a bunch of wiggle room. Presumably this could also affect Apple’s use of Microsoft Azure. It’s generally accepted that iCloud uses Azure as well as AWS, although none of the three companies have confirmed any of this.

Fortune has reached out to all of these companies and will update this story as needed.

But here’s the thing. Given Apple’s famous insular nature, it’s hard to see it relying on these big players in the long term. Apple is spending a ton on its own data center infrastructure. Last month Morgan Stanley analysts cited $3.9 billion in planned capital spending as an indicator that it is building its own massive data centers in the U.S. and Europe. The analysts said that as Apple starts using more of its own data center capacity, its spending on AWS—which the analysts estimated to be $1 billion a year—will trail off.

The bottom line is that no one outside these companies knows anything officially, but I would guess that Apple knows it has to control its own destiny when it comes to cloud infrastructure.

This is especially true as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all huge competitors to various pieces of Apple’s business. So for Apple to allow a dependency to grow on one or more of their clouds just doesn’t seem likely.

Still it takes years to build data centers. I agree with one long-time cloud watcher and IT consultant who said Apple always wants to control its own technology stack which means Apple will play these cloud providers off against each other until such time it’s ready to jettison all of them.

But hey, I’ve been wrong before.