Head in the clouds?
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In “Calling All Cloud Skeptics“, ZDNet writer Phil Wainewright begs for an antagonist to his Cloud Computing hero/idol, and asks who, as an expert in the IT community, could possibly understand Cloud Computing and still think it is anything less than a splendid idea and flawless technology.
Richard Stallman would be the man for the job that comes to mind, but unfortunately you could probably never get him to show up to a Cloud Computing conference.
He has some compelling reasons to be wary of the “Cloud”, yet of course there are also counter-arguments from Phil’s camp, mostly attacking Richard’s character rather than refuting his arguments against Cloud Computing.
I’d just like to summarize that in my humble opinion Cloud Computing is going to come and go like many other trends in IT… and to expand on this belief, I think it is a natural progression closely related to Nova Spivak’s commonly repeated analogy of computing as a pendulum swinging back & forth.
Allow me to present an example of this theory in action:
PRINT MEDIA
First, the Quill & paper (de-centralized)…
then the Printing Press (centralized)…
next came Typewriters (de-centralized)…
and then steam-powered mass-printing presses for widespread Book/Newspaper distribution (centralized)…
Home/Office Printers (de-centralized)…
Ebooks downloaded and controlled from central servers (centralized)
BC$ = Behavior, Content, Money
The goal of the BC$ project is to raise awareness and make changes with respect to the three pillars of information freedom - Behavior (pursuit of interests and passions), Content (sharing/exchanging ideas in various formats), Money (fairness and accessibility) - bringing to light the fact that:
1. We regularly hand over our browser histories, search histories and daily online activities to companies that want our money, or, to benefit from our use of their services with lucrative ad deals or sales of personal information.
2. We create and/or consume interesting content on their services, but we aren't adequately rewarded for our creative efforts or loyalty.
3. We pay money to be connected online (and possibly also over mobile), yet we lose both time and money by allowing companies to market to us with unsolicited advertisements, irrelevant product offers and unfairly structured service pricing plans.