Popular Science News – stay with me on this one, it’s possibly more important than you imagine. ‘The Cloud’ is a term used for storing your data and software applications on a remote computer rather than the one in your house. The idea is that you can use any PC to access this data, not just your own, and that rather than buy software you pay a rental fee to use the software supplied by ‘the cloud’ company. There are lots of benefits including no need to back up, if your PC fails or is lost then you just buy or borrow another and you’re back in business straight away and you will always have the most update piece of software at no extra cost.
Anyway, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, thinks otherwise. “I really worry about everything going to the cloud. I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years,” Wozniak was quoted as saying. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away.”
It has always been true that when you buy software or an ebook you license it and don’t actually own it but with ‘the Cloud’ you won’t even have a personal copy of the software or ebook. So what? Well it was Apple in 2009 that showed the first problem with this approach when it accidentally withdrew copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ along with all his works, from user devices attached to its iTune service. Apple actually deleted the book from users devices without their permission, which it didn’t need anyway. This was an accident but what if a totalitarian government took power in the future and decided in the same way to remove all books it didn’t like? What if it gave permission for all your data to be scanned for subversive phrases? Couldn’t happen? Well Steve Wozniak seems to think otherwise and I guess, as a TRNC resident who cannot access several websites because of Turkey’s censorship activities, I’m with him on this.
“I really worry about everything going to the cloud. I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years,” Wozniak was quoted as saying. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away.”
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