Opinion: Woz Predicts a Horrendous Cloud, and I Agree
We tend to like the technology we grow up with and adopt in the first half of our lives, eventually having trouble accepting new technologies that are adopted by our kids when we grow older. No one is safe from this trap. Even Steve Wozniak may show signs of getting old. Or, if he is right, we really have to fear the cloud.
In an interview, Woz commented on this thoughts about the cloud. Here is a taste:
- "I really worry about everything going to the cloud"
- "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."
- "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away"
- "I want to feel that I own things."
- "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."
I am sure that many of us share his concern about the security of the cloud. What struck me, however, was the note about "owning things". What exactly do we still own today? Aren't we already highly evolved as a subscription society, as opposed to the 20th century ownership society? Besides phone, TV and utility, we subscribe to various kind of data, software and information services. Our phones are subsidized by our subscriptions and our future tablets may be as well. We don't even own our cars anymore. Many of us lease cars, which is also - with a certain stretch - a kind of subscription. As far as our subscription happiness goes, isn't the cloud a natural evolution, especially as our kids grow up in a time in which they learn that you necessarily do not have to "own" physical music media, and other types of content that we can touch and feel, for example, in the form of a newspaper.
I completely agree with Woz that we are losing control over our data in the cloud and we certainly may lose ownership, if we don't pay attention to the terms and services we agree to. However, I would argue that the scenario has been set a long time ago and there is not much the 40s, 50s, and 60s year olds among us can change anymore. It’s the teens, 20s and 30s that are deciding the future of the cloud. From what I can see, they are completely happy with what they get.
The thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. I look at people who go about posting all sorts of personal info on blogs, pouring their would out on websites... In general there is this perception that this is the way things have started to go, it's the way things have to be. My generation and the one coming up tends to get a lot of the blame, but really I feel like it's been a collective thing where people just don't seem eager to defend their own rights. We like in a country in the US that, despite what you might think of the gov't or of business, you do have a choice to make. You don't have to buy any and everything that comes along. And even if it's a bit of a pain, you don't have to "keep up with the Jones'" or buy into anything because someone says it's great or awesome. We as individuals have the power to choose. Even if you like to use Facebook to keep in contact with friends, you choose what you put on it. A company can show as many commercials as they want, it doesn't mean you have to buy what they're selling. Show some will power!
Sorry, I know it's a long and preachy post, but I feel like people have just lost the will to use common sense in a lot of things. Not just the "looking back" types of things where you miss something, but stuff that should have been obvious and that had big warning signs thrown up.
Oops, your internet connection went down again due to a light rain shower. Also, your accounts got hit by a troll that tricked the customer support and an actually ID thief that exploited a backdoor.
Oops, your internet connection went down again due to a light rain shower. Also, your accounts got hit by a troll that tricked the customer support and an actually ID thief that exploited a backdoor.
They're too apathetic to care. What they'll end up with is a dystopian nightmare.
The thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. I look at people who go about posting all sorts of personal info on blogs, pouring their would out on websites... In general there is this perception that this is the way things have started to go, it's the way things have to be. My generation and the one coming up tends to get a lot of the blame, but really I feel like it's been a collective thing where people just don't seem eager to defend their own rights. We like in a country in the US that, despite what you might think of the gov't or of business, you do have a choice to make. You don't have to buy any and everything that comes along. And even if it's a bit of a pain, you don't have to "keep up with the Jones'" or buy into anything because someone says it's great or awesome. We as individuals have the power to choose. Even if you like to use Facebook to keep in contact with friends, you choose what you put on it. A company can show as many commercials as they want, it doesn't mean you have to buy what they're selling. Show some will power!
Sorry, I know it's a long and preachy post, but I feel like people have just lost the will to use common sense in a lot of things. Not just the "looking back" types of things where you miss something, but stuff that should have been obvious and that had big warning signs thrown up.
I have not and will never use the cloud, I keep my "stuff" on my hard drives.
If I need some external safe keeping, I burn a backup disk and put safely somewhere where I can retrieve it
even without an online connection.
Plus I don't have to pay some company for "cloud storage", that's just stupid, hard drives are way more convenient and cheaper. (you don't have to pay a monthly fee to keep using your hard drive)
But this recent trend to put everything in the cloud and store nothing locally disturbs me. I understand that there are cost benefits to not distributing high-capacity hard drives to everybody everywhere, but I just can't stand the idea of losing control over my data.
I understand the cloud and it's many many benefits. However, in my opinion, they absolutely do not outweigh the negatives. I prefer to take care of my own, and I'm not ready to rely on someone else to do it for me....
... Not to mention, if your internet service goes down for any reason, you're SOL.
The corporations want to roll out the cloud as it opens up a host of new profit opportunity's but i really hope those that do so by gambling with the customers data will receive hefty fines for lack of security if they get hacked.
This is about being smart.
The internet is NOT secure. Any computer connected to the internet is considered unsecured.
If everything starts storing every trivial thing online, people are going to get royally screwed every time their internet connection has hiccups or they go offline for whatever reason.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/
Personally I have not problem saving files on the cloud as a back-up and only if that data does not contain sensitive data (which in my case I am careful never to e-mail out private data). The problem arises when you have devices like Google's Chromebook or cloud based applications which is designed to save most/all of your data online and trust that information to a third party.
Living in New Zealand, unless you want to spend an obscene amount of money, you cannot get enough internet to stream movies, music etc without blowing your cap in a week ($75 per month gets you a 40gb limit plus a phone line)
Secondly, I just feel like anything that cannot be locally stored is not a possession of mine and that I am borrowing it (even if I have paid). Say I am wrongfully banned from the service, all i have paid for is lost. If the service goes down in several years time, even if I never want to use the content again I'll still feel like I've been robbed if it just goes away with the service. The fact I cannot control or do with the content what I choose (eg encoding a video to a different format to run on a phone) just feels too constrictive for something I should rightfully own.
But I have the utmost respect for Steve Wozniak. He has always appeared to be forthright and honest and I agree completely with his opinion. I have always felt that the cloud was in fact a wall cloud with an F5 tornado hidden inside.
It's rather odd that the people most pushing the cloud are the ones who want to "host" our data. Sorry, but give me local storage and control. There is absolutely no reason for all these people to have access to our data, and it's been proven time after time that it's not safe. Just look at all the hacks that have happened recently to all these databases.
I say pass on the cloud and let me order a new hard drive/flash drive.
The consortium of hardware vendors and software vendors...
Their hardware plan is to charge a premium on performance based hardware (the cloud servers and infrastructure) so they can span out performance progress longer and charge more for less on the consumer side of things.
Their software plan revolves around peeking on all the cloud data to bring to heel any emerging technologies that threaten the entrenched players.
It is pretty much a return to the dark age of computing (users use terminals) for both control and profit.
What really needs to happen is to enable average users to run their own clouds from home. (we already have this for people who know what they are doing, long before cloud became a buzzword)