Okay so let me get this straight..
While one hand is desperately trying to get a grip on the consequences of Too Big To Fail Financial Institutions the other hand is busy pushing ahead with the wonderful, “efficient” (man people do LOVE that word) technology of Cloud Computing which essentially derives it’s power from the economies of scale made possible by storing information in a handful of ginormous data centres instead of proprietary hardrives and servers. The Data Industrial Complex (pretty much anything to do with computing which these days touches on EVERYTHING) is trying hard to convince us that very soon we will only need a mobile phone or access to a “dumb” terminal to deal with all our computing needs.
Granted most of us already have a good chunk of our lives up there in the sky(net) but we still keep copies on our computers at home. Will laptops and desktops completely be replaced by tablets and mobile phones? I don’t see why not. If they don’t disappear completely, clunky 20th Century computing hardware might just find a niche use for itself, very much like turntables post CDs and ipods.
So get ready for a future where you generally don’t keep your data at home, but in a matrix of stupendously huge data warehouses “promised” to be kept safe from loss and malfeasant manipulation. FAT CHANCE. It would be nice to think that humans had, or could evolve to have, the moral fortitude to operate such a monstrous computational hydra but I’m not convinced.
“The competition between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large content players has long since moved beyond just who has the better videos or search. The competition for Internet dominance is now as much about infrastructure – raw data center computing power and about how efficiently (i.e. quickly and cheaply) you can deliver content to the consumer.” — see How Big is Google?
To grow, the Data Industrial Complex has nowhere to go but towards more complex systems that involve fewer companies dealing with larger and larger chunks of what goes on inside the working parts of the Net, or as I like to call it, Zoltar.
It is only a matter of time before we’ll be at the mercy of these large Computing Clouds that are Too Big To Burst. The Rats of Moral Hazard are busy swimming from the sinking merchant ships of Wall Street to the freshly minted cargo supertankers of the Data Industrial Complex. Just you wait and see….
All Hail Zoltar!
Wyndtunnel 
All hail Susan!
As and IT DataCentre manager, I just can’t accept the all pervasiveness of the cloud. It has its niches (as hosted services, what this used to be called, always had).
Many rich content applications require very fast network connections. There is a factor of distance to this, local installs can provide 1GB or 10GB network access to the computers in the office.
Have you tried to get 1GB or 10GB access from your Internet provider? Hah! Try even getting reliable 100Mb access, which was the old LAN standard of 10 years ago.
Then I consider ownership/client rights/legal rights to data (who has access to what?)/security/isolation/availability/etc. etc. etc. and I have to say no.
For some apps yeah, we’ll do it. But for the bulk of our services, not a chance.
Maybe Susan won’t be able to do it but give Zoltar a hundred years and it will succeed. Where there is a will, there is a way!
They also thought mapping the human genome would be impossible!
Funny how I am so resolutely optimistic about humanities talent at devising new and elaborate methods to do itself in!!
And this is why I don’t trust “the cloud”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20002890-83.html?tag=mncol
I hear ya.