[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009. Click here to read more columns.]
I've been reading a lot lately about the future of the cloud – and it doesn't have anything with the weather.
"The cloud" has become a leading way of describing what the internet is becoming, or to some minds, what it's always had the potential to be. If you're scratching your head, wondering what it's all about – and don't worry, I'm still kind of curious, even after asking many of the tech-minded folks I know – here's a 10-cent explanation.
With the cloud, you can do all of your computer functions pretty much anywhere. Instead of storing files and data to a hard drive on your PC, you keep all that stuff on a networked system, so that you can access what you need, no matter where you are or what you're using.
It's a big leap from how computers traditionally work, although we've been moving to a cloud-based environment for a while. If you use gmail and other Google applications, you're more or less already hooked into the major web trend of the day.
A lot of people are advocating for the cloud. Linux users and open-source developers, naturally, see it as the obvious result of their free-minded work.
But some major corporations are all over the cloud, too. Dell, for instance, tried in vain to trademark the phrase last year. More importantly, Microsoft is so keen on the concept that staff of the tech giant have been told to consider the cloud as fundamental a shift in their day-to-day business as the web was in the mid-1990s.
Microsoft is currently previewing Azure, an operating system that will take advantage of what everyone anticipates to be a more networked world. (I wonder if this will rinse out the awful aftertaste Vista has left.) Meanwhile, its Live Mesh system is already picking up subscribers … not to mention some industry acclaim, which comes as a bit of a surprise, given that bashing Microsoft is a default position for many tech types.
But Microsoft is no Johnny-come-lately here. Consider this bit from a New York Times article published all the way back in April 2001. The piece noted how Microsoft wanted to issue "software programs that do not reside on any one computer but instead exist in the 'cloud' of computers that make up the internet. The move from the desktop-based computing paradigm that Microsoft has controlled to an open-network approach would be a crucial one for all computer users and software programmers."
A lot has changed in eight years. Those open-source programmers, for instance, have seriously weakened Microsoft's grip on software. Wireless has become not just common, but a fundamental part of life for millions of users. Laptops now outsell desktop computers, taking advantage of the wireless universe.
So: portability, ease of access, affordable and more flexible tools … it all adds up.
To get a sense of my cloud-readiness, I did an inventory of my own computer use, which I'll admit is probably more than average. In my day job, I write and edit stories for CBC. In my home life, I publish a blog, and use my computers (yep, more than one) for a variety of pursuits.
At work, almost everything I do is stored on a network. Stories are filed to one system; video and images are also filed on a shared system. All of these elements can be accessed by other users. All of my e-mail is network-based. Surprisingly little, in fact, is saved to my desktop.
At home, I do keep some things on my home computer. (This column, for instance, is stored with other things I've written with that dinosaur app, word processing software.) My pictures and many, many songs take up a fair bit of space on my computer.
But they need not necessarily reside there. I could definitely adapt easily to putting them somewhere else, if I could get at them when I'm on the move. I'm not sure, though, about paying someone else for the access-it-from-anywhere convenience. I'm also a little uneasy about what the security implications will be, as we move more toward putting quite a lot of trust in other people's hands.
But I've looked at clouds from both sides now (sorry; can't resist a Joni Mitchell pun), and I'm more than comfortable with where things are going. Let's hope that cloud doesn't have a hidden storm tucked inside.
John Gushue is a news writer for CBCNews.ca in St. John's. Site suggestions always welcome at surf at thetelegram.com. John is on Facebook right here.
