Cloud

The transformation of technology has long been a fascination of mine.  How we go from one platform to another, or update from an older architecture to a new.

Cloud services are becoming more popular, and they’re an amazing enabler of transformation, and can definitely ease the transition, but what happens when there’s not a cloud in sight?

Connectivity is what I’m getting at.  The data, services, and applications we use, are only as good to us as their availability.  Until very recently if we wanted data in multiple devices or in multiple places, we often had an app on our desktop and one on our mobile devices, and we’d synchronize them.  Back in the Palm Pilot days, a cradle connected to a 9-pin serial port on our computers, then we moved to USB connections, then we could sync via WiFi, and very recently, we’ve started doing that via cloud based apps and services.

Like many, I use a password vault on my phone, my tablet, and my desktop, that recently began offering a cloud service.  I’d previously kept these in sync via my WiFi network.  When I decided to utilize their cloud service I made a big mess of things, because I had records on all three devices and when I turned on the cloud service I duplicated the entire database.  No problem, I simply deleted the apps on the mobile devices, made sure the desktop app was clean, then backed it up, (to the cloud of course), then deleted the desktop app and re-installed on all three.  Voila!  Like magic all three devices were back in sync.

But what happens when a WiFi router fails, or you are someplace where there is no cell reception?  Mobility and portability are great things to my mind.  As I look forward, I see 5G, 6G, or 7G cell networks, the proliferation of cell phone towers, and sharing of antennas between carriers, and I believe that our data will be increasingly more available.

These days, I’m installing fewer apps on my devices and using more cloud based services which is both space saving and money saving, and that’s a good thing, but I’m also relying more on my ability to connect to those services, which is a two edged sword.  I give up total control of my data, but I also don’t worry much about crashing hard drives, and broken devices.

It’s a risk worth taking for me, and one that I believe we’ll be corralled towards in the future.  For better or for worse…


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