Dashboard Roles

"Dashboard" is an interesting name for a UI component, one floated in any discussion about user interfaces today. The trouble I have in understanding dashboards is the same trouble I have in understanding "cloud" — what do they do? Is there a generic version of the dashboard that I could take and apply to the UI I'm working on right this moment? Or, does "dashboard" simply capture the idea that important user information needs to be available to the user, at all times? Still, we're left wondering how to go about providing this dashboard component for application X because we don't necessarily know what information is important to our users, and what information needs to be monitored, collected, and presented to the user in real time.