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Why and How I Join the Cloud Hype, and So Can You, Free Culture Amigos!
By HUNG Chao-Kuei on Tuesday, November 30 2010, 21:32 - Permalink
For those of us who have been using GNU/Linux, full-steam cloud computing began with ssh -X or VNC long time ago. For those of us who have contributed to Wikipedia or OpenClipArt or OpenStreetMap, the real benefit of cloud computing lies in the web 2.0 / read-write / prosumer / Pro-Am culture that emphasizes transparency, democracy, freedom of speech, collaboration, etc. Yet recent hypes smelling suspiciously of excessive commercial interest seem to mislead the general public away from the true values of cloud computing and into expensive software products that might lock in users. Lacking an exact and precise source of confusion to debunk the hype, I suggest that fellow advocates of the free culture movement jump on the cloud bandwagon and compete with the hype generator(s?) for the seat behind the steering wheel, popularizing the free culture concepts during the competition, as a peaceful way of fighting the cloud hypes.
In response to readers' suggestion to look at the cloud hype, I first wrote in May about Microsoft and Taiwan government's collaboration to invest 2.4*10^10 NT dollars smelling badly of corporate greed exploiting public ignorance while feeding on government resources. Seeing that the hype in Taiwan grows stronger and stronger each day, I wrote two blog articles in Chinese ( SaaS and PaaS history) and received some attention. Then I pasted the blog articles into a paper (Chinese) and presented it in one of the many academic cloud conferences. Later Carla Schroder of LinuxToday wrote a piece Keep Your Cloud, I'm a Customer Not a Consumer and I realized that the extensive hype is not limited to Taiwan alone. So I decided that the paper is worth translating into English (with slight modifications), as: "A Brief History of Cloud Computing (Before the Commercial Hype) and Purchasing Suggestions". For people and organizations that cannot adapt their working cultures to the wiki way of doing things, VNC and various FLOSS CMS are good enough cloud solutions. They should know of these before bothering with any proprietary and expensive SaaS.
Just like solar energy can be used to create a cooling system to combat the heat it brings about, or the greed and lack of trust of a scam artist group can be turned against itself, so can we turn the cloud hype into something productive and make it benefit the society.
- Let's write a whole bunch of academic papers (which usually I am not fond of doing) and blog posts talking about the success stories of deploying FLOSS such as all kinds of wikis and CMS like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress/Xoops/..., but using cloud computing jargons.
- Let's talk about repeated exploits on old IE's as a problem of flying into the cloud without safety measures.
- Let's talk about the importance of remix culture, why creative commons licenses help, why software patents hurt, etc. in light of cloud computing's superior work flow model.
- Let's talk about network neutrality, government transparency, citizen journalism, etc. from the viewpoint of a society heavily dependent on cloud computing.
- ...
In fact, I even volunteered to organize a session devoted to "Cloud Technology and the Society" (English draft) in an upcoming academic conference to be held in March or April 2011, an academic endeavor which I usually shun. Like those whose motives are selling more "cloud software", we can also appoint ourselves as cloud experts. Unlike them, we do have solid experiences of actually using cloud in a collaborative way to share with the confused public. As Microsoft and other interest groups engage in selling their software products as cloud computing's technical solutions, so should we engage in selling the collaborative experiences of the Wikipedia project and the likes as cloud computing's social advantages. And then let the confused public decide which flight towards the cloud looks safer, more convincing, and more economical.
(How is free culture related to the cloud hype? Please see A Brief History of Cloud Computing (Before the Commercial Hype) and Purchasing Suggestions for details.)
Comments
yes, i agree with you Hung!
We should jump to the cloud hype, before the greedy company steps their toes on us again, telling confused customer/consumer that their cloud product is the best. We do have our own idea of how cloud computing should be.
If it isn't running from my hard drive, with files that are in my possession, i don't want anything to do with it.
How does ceding control of your data to someone else translate to Free Culture?
I have a computer, it works very well. If I want to share information then I can use a private network of trusted individuals setup by ME.
some questions for you...
Q: What is the sole purpose of any business, large or small?
A: To make money!
Q: What is the best way to make sure a business continues to make money
A: Repeat business or vendor lockin
Q: What will I have to do in order to use a cloud service?
A: Sign a contract which ensures repeat business and thus, vendor lockin
Q: Do businesses care anything for privacy?
A: No, they just want to make money!
Q Can businesses make money from selling your private information?
A: Yes, Lots! It is now one of the largest industries (if you can call it that)
Q: Is there any benefit to having your information online instead of on a usb stick?
A: errr, NO.
Q: are there any drawbacks to storing your info in the "cloud"?
A: How about handing over all of your private info to someone and something that you have next to no knowledge of who will make lots of money from selling it on the black market in order to achieve its goal of making as much money as possible! This scares the sh*t out of me, as it should everyone.
People, please please please do not fall for this sh*t - EVER!
peace
@FreeBooteR,penquiniator,freeweaver:
I agree with you about the concerns over privacy, but interpret it in a different way. Instead of saying: "no way for me to trust my privacy to anyone else", I am telling people: "Make concious decisions of which pieces of information you want to share with the world." That's why I emphasize transparency as one of the key features of cloud computing. That's one of the points of joining the hype and reminding the public that whatever they put on the cloud is very likely to end up in anyone's hands.
Do we privacy keepers want to have anything to do with the cloud knowing that we have no privacy up there? Sadly it is virtually impossible to refuse leaving any traces in the cloud. By visiting any site for example, even without leaving any comment, your are already subject to all kinds of possible privacy invasions. All those facebook/feedjit/... widgets on a blog (this one for example), can collect information about you, although I don't think each and every one of them has an evil intent. And certainly you know of evercookies.
Everyone of us is already heavily using the cloud, and you can hardly enjoy any privacy in the cloud.
On the other hand we also conciously and willingly publish some kind of information on the cloud quite frequently. You are ceding (not every bit, but quite a lot of) control of your data to everyone else (not just the server admin) when you post on a personal blog, when you submit your GPS traces to OpenStreetMap, when you submit svg files to OpenClipArt. In these cases, not only are there many benefits to having one's information online instead of on a usb stick from the viewpoint of the entire world, but also it is so from the viewpoint of the information provider. In the age of attention economy, publishing your work using creative commons licenses is a good way to attract eyeballs.
In short, cloud is bane to privacy and boon to publicity (and mutual trust, by way of transparency). The public need to know this, but the hype generators are not going to tell them, so we step up and fill in the blank.
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