I saw an article on TechCrunch on Tuesday with the headline "'Careless Computing' and the Cloud: Richard Stallman Warns Against Chrome OS". I'll admit it; I had to click right away. The article broke down two essential schools of thoughts in the Cloud Computing world.
#1. Large companies don't care about you or your data.
#2. Consumers want speed and ease of use.
Richard Stallman's argument is that the Cloud is a marketing term "devoid of any meaning" and that if we trust large companies with all of our data, eventually we'll get burned. It leads us to the big question of "who will protect your data better than you?" But today is a world in which privacy concerns are disappearing quickly. Unprofessional Facebook photos are not the anomaly anymore, they're the norm. It makes you wonder how people will communicate messages in an age when secrecy is getting harder and harder to come by.
The flip side of the coin are consumers who want two things, speed and access.Can everything they need to get done happen quickly and effectively? If the answer is yes they're in. The early adopters of Cloud Computing are jumping in with both feet. Like it or not we're all be dragged along for the ride. The reason is that in truth it's faster, easier, and less painful than traditional desktop computing. It's no surprise that people are following the early adopters in. As for me, I'm waiting for the price points to come out for the Google Chrome OS because I think it could make my life a lot easier. I'm jumping in with both feet.