 "Photo: Guillaume Paumier/Wikimedia Commons")
Floppy disks officially died this week. The question is, who noticed?
Apparently, millions were sold in Japan last year, but I haven’t used one in years. My number one reason to use floppy disks, back in the day, was to shuttle papers back and forth between school and home. Since Word files are only 30-40 KB, dozens of papers could fit on a 1.44 MB floppy disk. Nothing else could, really, but I wasn’t moving any photos around, so it was OK.
When I got a Mac at home and had Linux computers at school, floppies didn’t work anymore, so I just started e-mailing myself. The Internet was fast enough and Gmail was easy enough to make this possible, and I never looked back. These days, I go one step further and use Google Documents.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was falling in love with “cloud computing.” The cloud is just another word for the Internet, basically, and cloud computing seeks to put as much data on the Internet as possible.
For anyone who has ever suffered the indignity of a hard drive failure, the idea of putting all their data on secure and redundant servers is brilliant. Gone would be the days of shambling into the Apple store, head hanging down, suffering the indignity of revealing your computer ineptitude to a Genius. And heaven help you if you have to be in line for tech support at the Geek Squad at Best Buy.
So why isn’t everything in the cloud already? Two reasons: Internet speed and privacy.
Putting documents on the Internet is pretty easy. Seldom are they anywhere larger than 100 KB, so they upload pretty quickly, regardless of your Internet connection. Pictures, however, are usually 1 MB or larger. At dial-up speeds, that can start to take an intolerable amount of time to upload. Videos? Forget about it.
High speed Internet is making its way into more and more people’s homes these days, but the high cost of service means that many people below the poverty line still cannot enjoy the speeds that most Loyola students are used to in their dorms or apartments.
Google is starting an initiative to bring high speed Internet to every home in America, but ubiquitous gigabit Internet access is still far off. Internet service providers aren’t keen on the idea either, and the combination of physical and legal obstacles standing between Google and its dream is daunting.
Furthermore, many people just aren’t too keen on letting Google have all of their information. If you have a Gmail account, a YouTube account, or any other Google Apps accounts then Google has your data. Do you use Chrome as your browser? Android as your phone operating system? Google Maps? Google has your information.
Google’s motto is “don’t be evil;” while it may seem like they’re becoming more and more of a monopoly on the Internet, they have made some concessions toward transparency. If you go to google.com/dashboard, you can see all the information that Google has about you. Not only that, but you can erase any amount of it.
Personally, I trust my information with Google. They have the best free e-mail available, and since I use Android, all of my information is tied to Google anyway. It’s also nice to have all of my calendars, emails and documents in one place.
Google isn’t the only player in the cloud, though. Have photos on Facebook? That’s in the cloud too. Don’t expect any transparency from them, though — Facebook is notoriously sneaky with its privacy regulations.
Twitter, Flickr, iWork, they’re all part of the cloud revolution too. And so are you, probably. If you’re still stuck with measly dial-up, then the cloud might not be for you, yet. But with the rise of new wireless broadband technologies, it’s getting easier and easier to get in the game.
My advice? Take the plunge, if you haven’t already. You’ll never have to worry about leaving a file at home again!
Besides, most of these services are free. If you’re one of the few people who still have a desktop, then it’s usually not a big deal to replace your hard drive with a larger one, or to simply add another, if there’s room in the case.
Laptop users aren’t so lucky. Even if you can manage to open up your machine, replacing the hard drive yourself can be disastrous or void your warranty. I’m not trying to dissuade do-it-yourselfers, but the risk of trusting Google seems easier to stomach than the risk of breaking your computer.
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