The economics of the Internet for the next 10 years

[yesthattom]

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/cloudware.html

The desktop is dead. Welcome to the Internet cloud, where massive facilities across the globe will store all the data you’ll ever use. George Gilder on the dawning of the petabyte age.

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Um, it's pretty much axiomatic that anything that comes out of the mouth of George Gilder (con artist, moneyman behind the "Intelligent Design" movement, owner of the American Spectator, all-around reactionary) is 100% bullshit.

It's to Wired magazine's lasting shame that they continue to publish him.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

He's the moneyman behind ID? HFS! That totally sucks.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he co-founded the Discovery Institute, largely with money that he made by using the Gilder Report as his own personal pump-and-dump stock scam. Gilder is an incredibly sleazy character, and just about everything he's ever touched is stained in some way.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

massive facilities across the globe will store all the data you’ll ever use

... saving billions in the NSA's budget.

[catness.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahaha.

Thanks, no. I'll store, encrypt, and back up my *own* data, thankyouverymuch.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

I have this same attitude, however, it is increasingly tempered by the pain-in-the-ass that running your own shop can be. I'd outsource it all if the shop met two conditions:

1. They do it all to my exacting specifications at a reasonable price.

2. They are utterly trustworthy with the data (i.e. high grade encryption, military-assault-resistant fortress facilities in distributed locations (on all continents), thorough employee background checks, and serious contractual penalties fo breach).

Until such an organization shows up, I'll keep on doing it myself...

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD! ARE YOU SAYING THAT THERE'S AN APPLICATION THAT ISN'T PERFECT FOR ALL PEOPLE?

Ok, now a more rational reply...


So what of the companies that use salesforce.com and keep all their data on their servers? They don't use encryption, they use a strongly worded contract.

I think this is the wave of the future... though not with the same enthusiasm as Gilder. Just like people like you and me mocked the mainframe generation, I think the next generation will be mocking our generation. And just as some people are perfectly happy to retain their mainframes even in 2006, keeping your data on other people's servers won't be for everyone.

On the other hand, some of the most important data in my life (my credit history) is stored unencrypted on a data base that I don't own, didn't know about for half my life, and can be accessed by dumb hicks that work for auto dealerships in the middle of Alabama.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Your credit history is about you, but it isn't yours. The main issue is the accuracy thereof.

I describe it this way: in small-town America, where everyone knows everyone (and everyone talks to everyone else), if you screw one merchant on main street, s/he'll tell the others, and they'll all become wary of doing business with you (no credit, cash on the barrelhead). This is your reputation, and the only way to control it is to behave in a forthright, reliable manner, and make good on all your promises & commitments, e.g. "my word is my bond."

Today, the situation is pretty much the same, except writ large: all merchants who extend credit report on the behavior of their customers to one or more of the three large credit history bureaus, and all (sane) merchants look up the reputations of potential customers at one or more of the bureaus before extending credit. Screw one merchant, and everyone will know it. Not surprisingly, a bad credit history also correlates with other things, like auto insurance claims.

Now, we do have a problem with inaccurate data in the databases (e.g. identity theft, or just plain wrong reports from merchants), and there is very little pressure on the bureaus to clean this up. I think the solution is application of libel laws to this situation. As I understand it, so far, the bureaus are protected by the notion that they are not publishing the data like a newspaper, but I'd claim, given the wide effect and general use of this data, that's a distinction without a difference.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Of all my friends that said "I'll NEVER EVER EVER enter my credit card number into a form on a web page", I wonder how many do that today.

10 years ago I was saying that. Now I do it a few times a week.

I wonder if 10 years from now this will be the same kind of situation.

[catness.livejournal.com]

Well, I never said that about my credit card number, but I *do* have a certain credit card that is the only one that gets used on the net. I limit my damage with that to this one card, which has fraud protection attached.

I can't think of anything in the world that is ever going to convince me that someone else can back up my data better than I can.

In an epic leap for my tiny little luddite brain, I'm just now starting to keep some of my photos on fotki.com (which can integrate into my own websites), and although I'm still unclear if I'm going to like that whole idea, I have at least 5 backup copies of that data elsewhere.

[tim1965.livejournal.com]

Hey, isn't that 1.8 giga-watt dam the one that's destroying the salmon runs? Why, yes it is.

Hey, aren't these massively powered computer chips built on "cheap electricity" -- the kind that disappeared with deregulation (the kind of deregulation promoted by George Gilder)? Why, yes they are.

Hey, aren't these computer chip factories all overseas now, creating a major national security risk? Why, most of them are, yes.

Hey, what'll happen with cheap electricity goes the way of cheap oil, and we can't make any more of these throwaway PCs or tightly-packed chips? Why.... no more cloudware.

But then, George Gilder is a fool. A stock-market manipulator in the same vein as those people who send me penny-stock advice every Sunday afternoon in the hopes of draining my bank account. The same guy who owns "The American Spectator" and is running the country into the ground. The same guy who promotes creationism and pours his money into the Rutherford Foundation (the Christian neo-fascist legal outfit that's tearing down the wall between church and state).

Ah well. I'm sure he's right about cloudware, though.

All sarcasm aside, I find his vision of the future of be arguably fascist and decidedly corporatist. Hannah Arendt defined two of fascism's key identifiers as corporatism in the service of government. Gilder's vision of the future isn't far off that.

I can't help but notice how Google's business model is built on runaway consumerism, a Veblenian nightmare of marketing-driven madness and maxed-out credit impoverishing a nation. Google's computing power is founded on cheap power -- environmentally degrading, to-hell-with-the-future-because-the-Rapture-is-near, insecure cheap power.

And I don't honestly feel his "vision" of the future is all that clear. Didn't the NY Times run a major piece on Google's computer warehouse on The Dalles a month ago? Gilder's just finding out about it and waxing lyrical like Hunter S. Thompson seeing Vegas for the first time??

"Wired" needs to find someone with real vision.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I feel the opposite. My credit history is my personal, private, history of what I have done in my life. Using it to judge my reputation is one thing, but conspiring to gather as much as possible and create market places that come up with new uses is totally the opposite.

> I think the solution is application of libel laws to this situation.

So you are going to take back anything you've ever said about lawyers that take on these kind of suits? Class action suits too?

Look, the bottom line is that we both know who butters our respective breads and it biases both of us.