Embrace the cloud computing revolution – with caution
March 5, 2013
Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Dan Gillmor.
Google recently launched its high-end Chromebook Pixel, and like previous Chromebooks this notebook computer makes a distinctly 21st Century assumption: that users’ data, work and play belong mostly online, not on their own computers. Google isn’t alone in pushing this notion, but it’s the most powerful evangelist for the shift to what tech people call the "cloud" and away from "local" storage. Call me unconvinced. Deeply unconvinced.
The cloud evangelists have an alluring pitch. First, they say, we can now count on being connected as much of the time as necessary. Second, these computing and data services becoming a utility like electricity – easier and safer to run from remote servers than on our local systems…
Like almost everyone else, I use lots of cloud services. They start with everything I do from a browser, such as search, microblogging (Twitter), multiuser games, etc. They also include my email (I store a few weeks’ worth of messages in an online system that shows me the same inbox and folder structure no matter what computer I’m using) and calendars, but in those cases I’m synchronizing the data to the local machine. And I use several online sites to back up my music and important documents. But move everything to the cloud, and use it in an on-demand way? No chance, at least not now – and probably not ever…
Read more from the source @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/05/cloud-data-revolution-google-chromebook-pixel