David Demic
ddemic@uwyo.edu
Each generation has had some tremendous invention that changed the way life was led.
After the Industrial Revolution, items that were once high-priced handcrafted goods became affordable mass-produced every day items. After the invention of computers, file storage and computations became a breeze. And of course the biggest invention of our time was (arguably) the Internet. And the inventions that the Internet has brought about have been snowballing ever since its inception.
One of the most fascinating recent trends is cloud computing. For those that have never heard of this term, it refers to the concept of magical online space to save all your pictures, videos, documents and the like on.
And yes, I think they are magical. Imagine that instead of always running out of space on your phone, your Vegas pictures get automatically uploaded to your personal “cloud.” Instead of a hospital keeping a server with database information about each patient—and potentially, and ironically, losing all the patient info due to a computer virus—said hospital simply uploads the information to dedicated server in the “cloud.”
Opponents will hate this concept right away, of course. Arguments such as “that can’t be safe” and “yeah, but you have to pay premiums to get large amounts of storage” definitely hold some ground.
However, in response to this one must also consider the alternative. When it comes to security, a personal home computer is at significantly more risk than a dedicated cloud server. While the cloud team has multiple anti-hacking experts on staff, your poor little PC is only protected by a standard edition of Norton Internet Security.
As far as the premiums are concerned, the service needs to be paid in some way. Spotify is a great example of this. As someone who still actually purchases music, I notice that I easily spend at least $10 per month. So, paying that much for a service that lets you not only listen to any song at any time, but even download them for later offline use, is a very reasonable thing to ask for.
The only real concern I have with cloud computing is security. Just like Facebook and SnapChat, customers of these services have to either choose clouds that legally protect individuals’ rights and privacy, or be OK with the fact that their personal data now belongs to a corporation.
While music is a fun use for the cloud, it can also function as an effective way to back-up important information. From a copy of your passport to a copy of your term paper are just a few of the uses.
Again, caution is of course advised, but the age of carrying around USB flash drives or external hard drives is simply over.
So, the next time you are looking at buying a USB stick, don’t. Instead, sign up for the premium DropBox service and get gigabytes of space online. Instead of wasting money on a CD album, get a month of Spotify and listen to the same music until you get sick of it, which is of course going to happen.
