From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.
Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now
In Part I of this series, I explored the idea that the desktop computer (whether PC or Mac) is becoming less important as we increasing are turning to other devices, such as smartphones, netbooks, tablet computers, and other digital devices to do what we used to use desktop computers to do. This evolution has given us greater freedom.
What are the components that make this new freedom possible and are their dangers or weaknesses in this new step? One component is new hardware. Whether a smartphone or a netbook or a tablet computer, devices have gotten smaller and more functional. More importantly, a wider range of these smaller devices that will connect us to the Internet. We can take them with us and use them in more and more places.
Size is not the only thing that matters, however. Another critical component is the compartmentalizing of tasks. Desktop computers are viewed as a revolutionary shift in the history of technology from the massive mainframe computers of the past. They offered full-scale computing power in a smaller package. The desktop still functions that way today. We load our desktop computers at work or at home with a whole host of full-scale programs to do word processing, bookkeeping, gaming, media functions and many other tasks. We will continue to use desktops for those functions. We increasingly have discovered, however, that the desktop computer encourages us to put more and more programs on it. Those programs get larger and larger as developers try to offer newer, more powerful versions of old software or new software products.
We are enticed by each new version of Word or Quicken, but do we actually need everything in these increasingly blotted versions of a program or operating system? Some, because of very specialized needs, would answer affirmatively. Those involved in publishing or graphic design or other fields will continue to want a computer that can run robust programs needed to produce their work. For most of us, however, particularly for our personal needs, we do not need more and more computing power on a single computer. We have a series of various, discrete tasks that we want to do and that can be accomplished very well with smaller devices.
So, the new evolution in technology leverages off this interest in more discrete computing. In place of massive desktop programs, we now have "Apps," short for applications. These are little programs that operate on the new range of smaller devices that go anywhere. They specialize in doing one thing well. Apps also have opened up avenues for developers to offer increasingly eclectic software for selected audiences. Because apps are less complicated software, they can be developed at much lower cost and tailored to very specific needs and interests.
The age of the "App" is here. Oprah is giving iPads to her staff. Oprah uses an iPad and Apps while she exercises, accessing CNN, ABC News, Scrabble while she is on the treadmill. Oprah even has her own App coming out. America and the world will surely follow.
The final component is "cloud computing". This refers to the use of the Internet as part of the computing experience. Software on mobile devices can be more minimal because some the the functionality is provided by programing features resident on the Internet. Let's take this blog as an example. Instead of writing this column on a full word processing program on my computer, I write this text using Google Blogger. I connect to Google's website, open this blog and create or edit posts. The word processing software is resident on Google's site, as is the finished product. I do not have to have software on my computer or iPhone or hard drive memory to store the text from this columns. The Google software has spell-checking, formatting and other functions for creating a blog.
There certainly are more robust programs for creating blogs, but Google's Blogger is more than adequate. More importantly, it frees me to work on this column at work, at home, and on the road. I wrote some of this blog at an ACTEC meeting in Pennsylvania. I am also free to work on this blog on all kinds of devices, from my desktop computer at work or at home, my laptop on the road, or even my iPod Touch or iPhone (although typing significant text on the iPod or iPhone itself is somewhat difficult). The simple fact is that this column "lives" in the cloud. It is available first on the Internet. You can read it there as it is finished by going to http://technobytesmd.blogspot.com/ (or CLICK LINK HERE). You can find prior posts. You can find links to material cited in the blog posts. Why wait months to get a stripped down, printed version?
Cloud computing thus has opened up a wide variety of activities. The Internet's social media juggernaut, Facebook, is almost complete an activity in the cloud. While you can upload pictures or graphics or some other items to your Facebook page, almost everything else is created on Facebook's servers on the Internet. You can create short status updates or longer notes and use a significant number of apps that function within Facebook.
The Internet is increasingly become the primary resource for information. We have seen the disappearance of encyclopedias as Google and Wikipedia have risen. Venerable print publications are disappearing into the Internet. The Oxford English Dictionary is discontinuing its printed edition and will be available only on the web. The telephone white pages are going too, with customers being give an option to request a printed telephone directory.
Is there a dark side to cloud computing? First, when functionality is dependent on the Internet, you need to be able to connect to the Internet. People with iPhones and other smartphones now are required to have data service plans from their cellular network, so they have access to the web. If they are out of range of a cell tower or a WiFi hotspot, however, they may not connect. A more major problem, however, is whether the cellular networks will be able to keep pace with the demand to connect to the Internet.
Until recently, one of the major disincentives to buying an iPhone was that it was only available from ATT and ATT,s network proved unsatisfactory in meeting the rising demand for Internet connections. Apple finally end this exclusive arrangement this year by making the iPhone available on the much stronger Verizon's network. Eventually,Verizon too may struggle to provide bandwidth to a legion of new customers.
Broadband usage has been steadily increasing. Exponential growth is expected in coming years. Reports from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010 highlight this issue.
Given this trend, vendors at MWC outdid each other in predicting traffic growth over the next five years: Cisco claimed that global data traffic will increase by a factor of 39 between 2009 and 2014, while Ericsson predicted fiftyfold growth by 2015. NSN plumped for forecasting an equally round, but rather more ambitious, hundredfold rise. Analysys Mason is currently working on its own forecast of global traffic, which will be published in April. The consensus within the industry is that there will be substantial growth in demand for wireless traffic over the next five years.
The message from MWC 2010: indoor coverage and subscriber management are the keys to dealing with exponential growth in wireless trafficMeeting this growth is going to require further technological development. Bandwidth is going to have to be sacrificed from other parts of the spectrum. "Subcriber management" points in the direction of getting folks to pay for the bandwidth being used for data transmission. Right now, I can use my laptop or my iPhone without a wireless plan from my cellphone carrier, but I have to depend on finding a WiFi connection. I have one at home through the modem for our Internet service, so I am paying for that service, but there is no price structure base on data usage (yet). I use as much or as little as I want, moderated only by the speed of the connection (and whether my son is also on the computer; more users on the same connection slows the speed).
On the road, I must depend on hotel WiFi networks, which can range from excellent (at the Bedford Springs Resort where I typed part of this piece) to non-existence, or other free WiFi connections. Of course, this wireless isn't "free". The establishment providing it is paying for it, and is passing along the cost in the price of the goods and services they sell (room rates or the cup of coffee at Starbuck or food at McDonalds). As broadband demand increases, the issue of net neutrality will be hotly debated. The danger is that some of us will be able to afford the direct or indirect cost of access and faster connections and others will be shut out.
There are other concerns with cloud computing. One of the critical elements in the use of smaller computing devices is the use of programs and storage on the Internet. Your iPhone or iPad does not have to be load with all kinds of programs, just apps, many of which function as a simple interface for programs that are on the Internet, not your device. Similarly, your work or results is often stored on the Internet, not on your device.
Let's return to the example of Facebook. You type your updates on the web. You up load pictures on the web. You share material already on the web with others through Facebook. You type and store notes on the Facebook site. None of this is on your computer unless you choose to save it in some way on your own on your computer.
Of course, there is the big question of who has the legal right to all this stuff that you put up on the Internet. Are all of the personal things you share on Facebook still yours, or does Facebook have rights to keep them and use them for its purposes. Facebook implicitly "shares" what you post, but use what you do online to market products to you or promote other activity on the web. Ingeniously (or insidiously), we are Facebook's "product" We generate the content that drives more and more users and activity to Facebook. Facebook, in turn, sells "us" to advertisers and marketers.
Increasingly, we are turning to the cloud to store information. We are backing up our computers. We are storing the work product from programs that we use. Amazon recently announced a new service to combine music that you purchase at Amazon and storage of the that music on its servers (Cloud Drive). It is even selling a music player that you can use on the web or on one of your devices (Android devices only right now). This is a blast of competition of Apple, who also wants you to buy music from the iTunes Store, but has no integration yet for storage.
Another example is a cloud based service called Evernote, available for your full computers and for mobile devices like smartphones. It is really a clipping and copying service for the Internet. You see an article or posting that you like or want to retain. Evernote lets you copy and save or cut and paste this items and saves it on its server. You also can create your own notes -- shopping lists, books to read, pictures, etc. It is intended to cut down on paper and to work across platforms. You synchronize whatever device that you are using to the Evernote servers online. You can then access your notes from another device, including a mobile device. I use it for reservations, confirmations, notes, articles of interest, directions, and many more things. It is free and can be upgrade to a premium service. Its attraction, however, is its accessibility through the cloud.
What happens if Amazon or Facebook or one of new storage services goes out of business? What happens to your "stuff"? If you actually store large amounts of information in the "cloud", there are also issues about security and privacy of that information. Whatever information you are storing or creating on the Internet in fact is stored somewhere on someone's server. So you have to be careful about the security of those servers. If hackers can get to the information on those servers, you may be in big trouble. Recently, Sony admitted that hackers had breached its servers twice within a short period of time and made off with significant information, including credit card numbers, stored on those servers as a result of Sony's online PlayStation gaming network.
There is also increasing concern about the security of the Internet itself. I have reported here before about cyber-warfare between nations. Recently, there were news reports about a new Internet "18 minute gap". For approximately 18 minutes in April of 2010 15% of the world's Internet traffic was mysteriously routed through servers in China. According to ComputerWorld, just as puzzling was that the intercept:
affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.Now The Wall Street Journal reports that we are embroiled in a rash of "hackactivism" in the wake of WikiLeak's release of classified diplomatic cables. Having released the classified cables, WikiLeaks suffered a back lash. Hackers attacked and shut down or slowed the WikiLeaks servers to try to slow or stop the disclosure. Amazon, which had been providing WikiLeaks with server space, turned them out. Credit card companies announced that they would stop transferring money to WikiLeaks. Hackers supporting WikiLeaks have struck back. So we had a WikiLeaks cyber-war. What is ominous here, however, is that individual hackers, not governments, appear to be launching this attacks and causing chaos, at least briefly, on parts of the Internet.
Finally, some think that this new "freedom" is nothing of the sort. If we are constantly connected, we may find that our work follows us 24/7, that we no long have purely leisure time to ourselves. This, of course, depends on how the user uses and manages technology, not something that technology imposes on the user. You can always turn off the device, leave at home, or simply choose to use it or not. One way to separate your work and personal life is to be clear where the line is, when you are available for work activities and when you are not. This applies when you in the office and do not want to be disturbed. You forward your telephone to voice-mail or have your calls answered; you stop reading email. This type of focus should apply beyond the physical confines of the office. Some people have to be "on-call", but there should be a clear understanding for all of us as to when we are not on-call.
These changes are rapidly occurring. They are changing our lives. There are significant issues to consider, but I doubt that any of these issues will halt the growth of the cloud and the rise of the Internet as the primary arena for the technology now and in the future.
