RE: [projectvrm] Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak condemns the clou d

["Crosbie Fitch" < >]

Who owns or controls the e-mail system? Is it me, you, IBM, or everyone/no-one?

 

The Cloud (in the pure sense) is just like e-mail except that instead of being a medium via which messages can be transmitted from sender to receiver, the messages remain in the medium (limbo?). Call these messages personal data if you like. Use encryption if you want to. However, just like e-mail, once you hit send or 'upload to cloud' it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it from that point on. You can't delete it. You can't hide it. You can point others to it, or you can hope no-one bothers to look at it. But like e-mail, this cloud isn't personal, nor is it a corporation's walled garden, it's simply extremely useful to everyone, and everyone participates in making it work. It can be used and accessed from anywhere that has Internet access and suitable client software.

 

Unfortunately, like e-mail, it's tricky for a pure cloud to be developed. Every corporation wants to create their own cloud and persuade everyone to use theirs, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Gold 

 

We could skip the walled garden phase of cloud technology and jump straight to the p2p pure version, but we'd first need to develop a crowdfunding mechanism to enable the public to fund such things - because they cannot benefit a private investor to the exclusion of all others (and the state doesn't like uncontrolled technologies, so they won't fund it on the public's behalf either).

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From: Johannes Ernst [mailto: ]
Sent: 07 August 2012 21:41
To: Crosbie Fitch
Cc: ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak condemns the clou d

That's why we are trying to talk about "personal cloud" vs "somebody else's cloud".

On Aug 6, 2012, at 23:52, Crosbie Fitch < "> > wrote:

'The Cloud' should connote a fully distributed/p2p, decentralised, no-single-entity-or-cartel-controls-it, data storage/communications/processing system.

 

Unfortunately, while those may be connotations the term is intended to inspire, 'the cloud' is simply a marketing term to invite the gullible to store all their 'personal data' on the service provider's Internet-accessible data storage facilities, which may even be distributed to some extent, but not in the above sense.

 

Ask "Who does the cloud belong to? Who controls it?" If the answer is "Google", "Microsoft", or "IBM", etc. then it's not safe.

 

I'd wait until the answer is "No-one/everyone!"

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From: "> [mailto:luk@synergetics.be]
Sent: Tuesday, 7 August 2012 4:03am
To: Doc Searls; Mary Hodder
Cc: Craig Burton; J Clark; ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak condemns the cloud

The cloud as it is, is in fact unsuited for personal data management since most layers & functions are not controlled by the individual. More work needs to be done on this and on cloud portability.

L.