all your data belongs to the one of the internet (blessed be the trunk and all its branches)

To take a break from quiet paranoia for a bit (my paranoia is very paranoid but it's quite exhausting):

The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash by Charlie Stross (thanks to anatsuno for the original link)

I call it Our Dystopia: How Bladerunner and Neuromancer Weren't Quite Depressing Enough So Let's Mix This In and Really Lose the Will to Live, because halfway through comments, I was already like, thinking of stocking up on spare 1TB drives and spray-paint my keyboard in various (and tastefully renegade) shades of green for my inevitable escape to the underground (in the jungle?) clutching my hard drives to my chest while being chased by G4 and G5 mobile's Everpresent Eye trying to steal my data from my cold, dead fingers.

I quibble politely with this:

That's the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

And.

If you're using an iPad in 2015, my bet is that you won't bother to have home broadband; you'll just have data on demand wherever you are. You won't bother yourself about backups, because your data is stored in Apple's cloud. You won't need to bother about software updates because all that stuff will simply happen automatically in the background, without any fuss: nor will worms or viruses or malware be allowed. You will, of course, pay a lot more for the experience than your netbook-toting hardcore microsofties — but you won't have to worry about your antivirus software breaking your computer, either. Because you won't have a "computer" in the current sense of the word. You'll just be surrounded by a swarm of devices that give you access to your data whenever and however you need it.

Clarification:

It is 2010 and I can't download a song from Amazon on my G1 unless I'm standing in just the right part of the parking lot on one leg while humming Whataya Want From Me backward (all roads lead to Adam Lambert; he's magic). I live in Austin--you're saying in five years--five years--the current disgraceful state of wireless global networking will not crash and die when I need Jason Derulo's new single like now? That's like saying in five years I can finally give up the flesh and the tyranny of individualism and join the One of the Net, All Seeing, All Knowing, All Surfing (May the Oneness Last Forever).

What I'm saying is, you think in five years mobile access is not going to make me curse the name of all who own iPhones for stealing my bandwidth? Stop raising my hopes here, okay? That's just like, cruel.

(On the inevitability of All Our Data Belongs To Big Network Drives in five years: did I ever mention that we had a major data center that required a firehose once to avoid overheating? Yeah. Call me when no one is standing anywhere holding a giant hose with an embarrassed expression. Maybe then I won't laugh too hard.)

(PS: Swarming. I love that word.)

Comments

[seperis]

What does Apple put in it's drinks these days, sodium pentothol? I have no idea how to spell that and my browser isn't helping.

[pixel]

Must be.

Y'know, I always kinda sideline supported Mac products for those that could afford them, my very infrequent encounters with them were always reasonable and, honestly, anything not!Microsoft could have my vote. Except recently? Not so much.

[seperis]

I gave away my iPod and got netbooks for my sisters just to head this off and that was before Jobs' tantrum about Flash--that's when I signed up Child for Flash courses this summer.

Right now, it's not even that I think Google is the safer option here, but at least so far, Android is open-source and isn't locking down its marketplace. I really, and I mean this beyond words, get nervous when someone controls the hardware and the software at the same time. I still use iTunes, but that's about it; if amazon had as easy a system to download and organize music with on my computer, I'd already have switched over.