The Stoic’s View on Cloud Computing

I’m a big fan of the Stoics, the ancient Greek philosophers who founded Stoicism. Theirs was a practical philosophy that focused on living a virtuous life in accordance with reason and nature. They believed in self-control and most importantly (for this article, at least) focused on what they could control rather than external events, which they saw as beyond their power.

I’ve been thinking of Stoicism over the past week since Amazon Web Services, the global behemoth of cloud computing infrastructure, suffered an outage that impacted a large number of customers, most notably a bunch of social media platforms. The reason Stoicism came to mind is that outages happen, and they’re an external factor largely out of users’ control. What people can control, however, is how they design and prepare their systems, not to expect perfection, but to accept that, technically speaking, things will sometimes fall apart.

For those who don’t live and breathe technology, AWS (as it’s more commonly known) is the plumbing of much of the modern internet. It’s the invisible backbone that keeps apps, websites and services running, from photo-sharing platforms to food delivery apps and even banking systems. When AWS sneezes, the internet catches a cold. And last week, it sneezed loudly.

In the early hours of the outage, users across the globe started noticing things going wrong. Snapchat wouldn’t load, Fortnite went offline, Duolingo learners were cut off mid-lesson, and a few online payment systems briefly stopped working. It wasn’t the end of the world, no planes fell from the sky, and no nuclear reactors melted down, but in the modern digital world, any hiccup feels bigger than it probably is. People rely on these services to communicate, work, and unwind. When they vanish for a few hours, it feels strangely unsettling.

Amazon, to its credit, was quick to explain that the problem lay deep within one of its data centres in the United States. Engineers worked around the clock to fix it, and by the end of the day, most services were back online. Still, for many businesses and individuals, it was a sobering reminder of just how dependent we’ve become on a few giant tech companies to keep our digital lives running smoothly.

Now, I’ve been banging on for years about what I call “architecting for failure.” It’s a fancy way of saying that when you build something, whether it’s a piece of software, a business, or even your personal life, you should expect things to go wrong and plan accordingly. That idea sits very comfortably alongside Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believed in preparing for adversity, not in a gloomy way, but in a practical one. They called it “premeditatio malorum” – the premeditation of evils. Essentially, imagine what could go wrong, so that when it does, you’re not surprised or paralysed.

It’s a mindset that’s worth adopting far beyond the world of technology. The AWS outage might have been a technical issue, but the lesson is universal. In life, as in the cloud, things fail. Systems go down. Plans unravel. The question isn’t whether you can stop that from happening (you can’t), but how you respond when it does.

One of the things that struck me during the outage was how quickly people jumped online to express outrage, ironically, on platforms that were themselves only half-functioning. There’s a sense of collective panic when the digital fabric tears, even briefly. But the truth is, our online world is built by humans, and humans are fallible. The expectation that everything should work perfectly, all the time, is not only unrealistic, it’s a recipe for frustration.

The Stoics would have told us to focus on what we can control: in this case, perhaps taking a break, stepping outside, reading a book, or even, dare I say it, having a real-life conversation while the internet recovers. For businesses, the same logic applies. You can’t control when a massive service provider has a hiccup, but you can control your own resilience. You can have backups, contingency plans, and, most importantly, the humility to recognise that perfection is a myth.

This outage also reveals something deeper about our collective dependence on a handful of tech giants. It’s convenient to have one company handle all the hard parts of running digital infrastructure, and AWS does it extraordinarily well, most of the time. But convenience comes with risk. When too much of the world relies on one system, a small failure there can feel like a big failure everywhere. It’s a bit like relying on one supermarket chain for all your food: great when it works, uncomfortable when it doesn’t.

As someone who’s spent a career watching the evolution of technology, I find myself less surprised and more philosophical about these moments. Every few years, an AWS outage makes headlines, and each time people act as though it’s unprecedented. Yet each time, it passes, lessons are learned, and systems improve. There’s progress in the imperfection.

And so, I come back to the Stoics. They didn’t advocate indifference, but rather acceptance. Not a shrug of the shoulders, but a calm recognition that the world is unpredictable. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, we have a choice. We can rant, rage, and refresh our browsers in despair, or we can pause, reflect, and get on with what we can control.

When AWS went down, my first instinct wasn’t to complain but to smile wryly. It’s another reminder that even the mightiest systems stumble. The lesson isn’t to avoid failure, but to expect it and plan for it. As the Stoics would say: you can’t stop the storm, but you can prepare your ship.

And perhaps that’s a good lesson for all of us, whether we’re managing a business, writing code, or just trying to get through the week. Things will go wrong. Servers will crash. Plans will change. But if we approach it with a Stoic mindset, maybe, just maybe, we’ll weather it a little better next time.