Sunday, December 18, 2011

Resisting the Cloud

I gave my wife an iPad for an early Christmas present.

BAGMAN: "And we love it!"

"But she always gets priority on using it," I protest. 

BUTLER: "Mathematics don't lie.  The iPad already has 51,694 apps on it -- three of which are hers."

"But she really likes Solitaire, Hearts, and Spades," I continue protesting. 

Anyhow, the motivations behind gift-giving are not the subject of this post! 


Cyberspace is embracing "The Cloud" as the future of data storage.  We might not even need harddrives anymore!  Backup your computer to the CLOUD!!  

But what if it rains, I wonder.  Do I lose stuff?

I've already succumbed to the blind trustworthyness of Blogspot and Flicker which have already swallowed almost my entire photo collection to some place where my stuff will live forever -- available to anyone despite feeble copyright notices -- unless I get a Ph.D. in deleting things from the web. 

The "cloud" does seem more benign than the "web".

Where does all the junk the human race posts every day actually go?   Sometimes I picture the Internet as an infinite landfill.

When I was a child, I accepted the stereotypical childlike vision of God and Heaven as a white bearded giant and angels living in the clouds.   What must they be thinking of all the stuff the human race uploads every moment?  

Apple sent me an email yesterday with a reminder that I have not yet taken advantage of my free Cloud which came with the iPad.   But I'm still backing up to an external harddrive.

I wonder how long it will be before the Cloud police show up at my door.

6 comments:

  1. Had it not been for the Cloud (in my case, photobucket, hotmail, googlemail and blogger), I would have lost a lot pictures, emails and other things that mean a lot to me when in October the HDD of my computer went bust and needed replacing. Yes, I do have backups for the most important stuff on various USB sticks and CDs, but there were at least 3 months worth of pictures that did not exist anywhere else yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have similar mixed feelings of trust vs distrust in the Cloud. For all I know, I'm not 100% sure that it hasn't already, on its own initiative, copied all my data without my being aware of it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I bought my husband an iPod touch for his birthday and my daughter has download 10 times more apps on it then he has! ;-) I'm not so sure about something called "The Cloud"--I only just tip-toed into online banking.

    ReplyDelete
  4. the first time I heard of the cloud, it was on a poster that said HARNESSING THE POWER OF CLOUDS or something. I thought it meant that they were going to use the sky and clouds as a renewable energy source.
    I'm dumb.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Being a paranoid old alcoholic, I too resist the cloud. I write on word and save to two hard drives. Yes, I have lost everything several times. Only then do I post here. I put photos on my photo host only if i am going to use them here. Keeping life simple. I had a photo host vanish once. and that cured me of saving in the cloud.

    ReplyDelete
  6. My son took a job with a new company ServiceMesh and he is working with clouds. Have no idea what that is. Nice post. Merry Christmas Mark and family.
    QMM

    ReplyDelete