Contemplating the “Cloud”
By Jim Surber
My last writing described nine common items that could easily be
eliminated over the coming years, mostly as a result of our expanding
use of computers and technology. One of these was our “things” such as
documents and pictures, currently stored on our personal computers,
which soon may be stored on a universal service known as “the Cloud.”
My first experience with a computer was some forty-two years ago during
my second year at Ohio State University. Their mainframe computer,
called the IBM System 360, covered an entire floor of a huge building
and was completely surrounded with glass so that the temperature and
humidity of its space could be precisely controlled. You could “talk”
or interact with this behemoth only by using sets of punch cards that
you created on a key punch machine, and were fed to the computer by a
trained technician. It took a series of cards for your identification
and to start and end a program, as well as one card for each individual
command in the computer language known as Fortran. If you were lucky
enough that your program “ran,” which meant that you had no mistakes in
the computer language or procedure, you then hoped that you had
correctly defined the computational procedures.
Back then, we thought computers were only for making complex
mathematical computations, very quickly and accurately; and the
computer did it extremely well if one had the knowledge, skill and
patience to correctly use them.
We could not have believed or even understood today’s world where
almost everyone owns a computer, infinitely more versatile and powerful
than the huge IBM. Neither could we have anticipated how most computers
would eventually be used. Not for crunching numbers in complex formulas
or making thousands of calculations to approximate a working solution;
but used by the masses to send and receive jokes, pay bills, read books
and the news, and hundreds of other applications, both enhancing and
degrading to society.
We should be shocked and humbled by how fast computer and information
technology has advanced over the last four decades. As a somewhat
grudgingly daily computer user, I am amazed by younger people’s
dexterity and mastery of things like texting, smart phones and the
like. But maybe my “dinosaur” tendencies can provide a different
perspective.
Consider “cloud computing,” which is apparently the coming thing that
will eliminate all forms of data storage by personal computers. All
personal and public information will be stored in a huge cyber
repository for a monthly access fee. Cloud users will access the
service using a computer, netbook, pad computer, smart phone, or other
device in addition to PCs. No programs or applications are needed by
the user’s device or computer, as all processing and storage is owned
and maintained by the cloud server. Will most, if not all, of mankind’s
information, technology and knowledge soon be stored in a single
location?
Long before the Internet in 1943, (prehistoric times by computer
standards) IBM chief Thomas Watson famously declared that the world of
the future would probably only need five computers. As PCs and laptops
multiplied, everyone remembered the prediction and laughed, but with
the rise of cloud computing and the mega data centers, nobody is
laughing any more. Has history taught us the perils of storing
information in a single location?
The Ancient Library of Alexandria, Egypt, founded by a student of
Aristotle, was given the huge task to collect, seriously and
systematically, the knowledge of the world. By all available accounts
it did just that and amassed perhaps one million scrolls containing the
total of man’s literature, history, and technology. It was the
brain and glory of the then-greatest city on planet Earth, and all of
the ancient world’s knowledge was contained within its walls. It was
the first true research institute where the greatest philosophers,
astronomers, mathematicians, linguists, engineers, and physicians
studied and worked.
During the Library’s operation, the Kings of the day regarded advances
in science, literature and medicine as the treasures of the empire. For
centuries they heavily supported research and scholarship, an
enlightened view shared by few heads of state, then or now.
The great library was destroyed by fire. Historians disagree whether
the destructor was Julius Caesar, radical Christians, or Muslim
conquerors, but the list certainly contains an object of hatred for
most people. The sum total of the thoughts and knowledge of mankind,
much of which had to wait more than 2000 years to be rediscovered,
vanished because there was no “backup.”
The Library of Alexandria was the “Cloud” of its time. It flourished
for some seven hundred years but vanished in probably a few hours.
Scholarly information which survived over the many centuries after its
destruction did so only due to many dedicated “IT shops” of the time:
monasteries and monks who replicated texts by hand, making and
distributing many “backup” copies.
What does this mean to us today, if it means anything? What can happen
when we all rely on a few copies, or server farms, to store our data?
It can be effectively argued that a lot of extremely valuable knowledge
from the ancient world was lost because it was stored in too few
places. It can also be argued that the advance of our civilization was
held back for thousands of years. Was this simply a case of not enough
backups?
Should knowledge be widely disseminated for the sake of its own
security as well as for the greater good of civilization; not stored in
some universal repository which is subject to unanticipated
destruction? Or, would another tragic elimination of mankind’s
collective knowledge simply be the inevitable repetition of history?
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