There’s nothing like the physical world to give us a powerful corollary of how it works in the cyber world.

I’m always reminded of this in late December when families and friends get together at the end of a few months of solid graft and a winter vomiting bug or two runs riot, moving through areas like wildfire.

That’s really viral, genuinely viral. You can see why the term virus was coined in the cyber world. A physical virus is an amazing thing, replicating itself, producing different strains and moving quickly through people in different cycles and timeframes.

Millions can be affected within the space of a couple of weeks, brought on by the combination of people being at a low ebb and slightly more vulnerable to infection after a sustained period of work, proximity to others, and mobility within family groups and circles of friends.

I’m always fascinated by how terms like desktop, folder, cloud, virus and so on are borrowed from the physical world for their digital equivalent. They always seem so apt.