人造节日：荒芜的仪式感

“人造节日”已然成为商家，尤其是电商商家的营销例汤。“双十一”、“双十二”、“6•18”、“女人节”、“5•20”……是所谓“节日必然搞促销，没节造节也要搞”。

作为一个跟中国人本来八竿子打不着的节日，“情人节”现在不仅有西洋版、中国版，还有东洋版。

这还算是有据可查的，没据可查的那就更加信马由缰了。好多年前我们公司有同事申办了个“男人节”，日子定在了逆反3月8日的8月3日。这不，现在又有了3月7日“女生节”，可能马上3月6日该定为“女孩节”了。

有一次我就被节日给幽默到了。当年为了“中国旅游日”到底应该定在哪一天展开了一场大讨论。得票很高的几个选项中有一个是6月16日。原因？谐音“遛一遛”。可惜最后没遛成，日子定在了5月19日，据说是因为那天是《徐霞客游记》首篇《游天台山日记》开篇之日。

最近才看了徐浩峰的《师父》。除了是打戏的干巴利落脆，片中让人印象最深刻的是对仪式感的尊重，规矩里面见方圆。中国的传统文化里是极其重视仪式感的，可惜因为“不够洋气”被人嫌弃。够洋气的那一堆又被商家玩变了形，现在更进化到土洋结合爱谁谁。于是，就搞得我们在一堆仪式面前，仪式感反倒成了一种稀缺；在一堆节庆面前，反倒没有了喜悦的理由。

关于仪式感，最恰如其分的说明出现在《小王子》里面。

小王子在驯养狐狸后的第二天又去看望它。

“你每天最好在相同的时间来，”狐狸说，“比如说，你下午四点钟来，那么从三点钟起，我就开始感到幸福。时间越临近，我就越感到幸福。到了四点钟的时候，我就会坐立不安；我就会发现幸福的代价。但是，如果你随便什么时候来，我就不知道在什么时候该准备好我的心情……应当有一定的仪式。”

“仪式是什么？”小王子问道。

“这也是经常被遗忘的事情。”狐狸说，“它就是使某一天与其他日子不同，使某一时刻与其他时刻不同。”

仪式感，暗示你必须要认真地去对待这件事。

越是虚头巴脑不确定的东西越需要仪式感，比如爱情、身份的认同感，旧的在哪里结束，新的又在哪里开始……在看得见摸得着的世界和看不见摸不着的世界之间，仪式如同一条隧道连接两端。

对于仪式感的需求，每个人都不一样，但你我都需要仪式感——衣裳、包包、袖扣、发型、纹身、座次、排名、度假、瑜伽、打坐、电影、画画、抄经、高尔夫、小剧场、拍卖会、艺术展、周末的足球、一场说走就走的旅行、时代广场显示屏、纳斯达克的钟声……

大多时候，生活的确是平淡无奇又匆匆忙忙，在日子被过成一潭又一潭死水之前，惟有靠一场场仪式摆渡前行。

不走心，仪式只剩下无聊的形式。而泛滥无聊的仪式只能让我们不配拥有仪式感。

帕斯卡说过：“跪下，动动嘴唇祈祷，你就会相信。”

跪下？别逗了，都忙着站着把钱挣了呢。（财富中文网）

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.