The future of computing and how it will
affect you and the economy
You’re probably hearing a lot about cloud computing these days and how it’s
being praised as being the death of the PC. In fact, this week’s eWeek announced
that the era of the PC was officially over. Actually, cloud computing is just a
way for the big companies to freshen up and KEEP their revenue streams. In other
words, where their money comes from and how much they can get. It’s also the
ultimate anti-piracy strategy. But cloud computing represents a much more
profound change, a massive, world-wide paradigm shift:: a shift away from
physical stuff towards non-physical stuff, and that has massive consequences for
all of society.
Why Cloud
Computing?
Cloud computing is not simply the latest-and-greatest, “Hey, cool, I can
store all my music on Amazon’s cloud” idea. Instead, cloud computing is a major
paradigm shift* in the way humans have done business for thousands of years: by
buying and owning things. Once you bought something, you owned it.
After that, you only bought a new something when yours broke or you lost it or
gave it away. I’ve had my blender for nearly forty years. How’d you like to buy
a new blender every year? Or all your kitchen appliances? Or rent them by the
month? That’s what’s called a paradigm shift. A change in a major way of
thinking so profound that it affects everyone. Like the development of the
scientific method. Or the notion that the earth rotates around the sun, instead
of the other way around. Or, here are some good ones: freedom, equality, and
equal rights. Or, in quantum mechanics, the idea that the laws that apply to
large things are different from the laws that apply to small things.
The first hint of this paradigm shift started decades ago with the advent of
cable television (actually, it really started with the telephone service which
replaced much of written communication, but cable is where we all really started
noticing the difference). Broadcasting wasn’t free anymore; you had to pay by
the month, in short, rent. The same paradigm shift has already expanded to cell
phones and cable/dish television. You rent your cable or satellite connection,
the same way you rent your cell phone service. Now, it’s happening with
computers. The whole idea of owning your own software, to say nothing of being
able to be an independent user not connected to the virus-ridden Internet 24/7,
is going out the window. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Here’s what happened. One day Microsoft and Adobe and IBM and HP and Dell and
all the big software and hardware companies woke up and realized to their horror
that they’d actually SOLD their products to people who (gasp) might not
upgrade to the new version or, even worse, in the case of software, copy and
distribute it. The “cloud” is the ultimate anti-piracy scheme.
(This means you, China.)
How it will
work
First of all, you will no longer own your own software. What you will own is
a gadget the computer industry has for years been calling “an Internet
appliance” or a “thin Internet client.” Now, when you hear the word
“appliance” you might be thinking of, say, a dishwasher, or a washer or dryer,
maybe a small appliance like a blender or a coffee maker. Wrong. Think “cell
phone.” Because that’s how the Internet Service Providers will be thinking of
it; in fact, they already are. Here at DataStep, we’ve already bought our first
two dirt-cheap Internet appliances: a couple of little notebooks chock full of
RAM and with almost no software. Instead of Microsoft Office, we’re switching to
OpenOffice.org, which is FREE. It’s part of the international
Open Source project and it’s available in nearly all languages and on all
platforms: Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux, whatever. And, unlike the latest grotesque
versions of Microsoft Office, it’s simple, clean, and efficient. To get your
copy, just click here OpenOffice.org or click the OpenOffice.org
logo under the menu. Of note: Microsoft is now offering a “reduced
functionality” version of Office. Great. Now can they get rid of the incredibly
ugly menu bar at the top?
Instead of what we now think of as computers, you’ll have something that
looks vaguely like a cross between a tablet and a cell phone, say an Apple iPad
or the Motorola (now Goggle) Xoom. It will be small, flat, and thin. Not small
enough to put in a pocket, at least until the designers start re-designing
pockets, which they will, along with purses and carry-bags, because we’ll all
need somewhere to put the gadget. And note that I’m saying gadget, singular. One
of the problems now is that there are just too many gadgets. A recent industry
survey estimated a current national distribution of about seven gadgets per
person. Cell phones, Blackberries, laptops and tablets, Wii devices and other
gaming controls, iPods or other MP3 players, cable/satellite television
receivers, even remotes for your television or to open or lock your car, the
list goes on and on. Sometime very soon, manufacturers are going to start
combining gadgets. They’ll have to. In fact, they’ve already combined the cell
phone and MP3 player, but that was inevitable. You don’t need too much room for
either one. The next step will to combine the reader and computer. After all,
wouldn’t it be neat to unfold your cell phone or eReader and have a decent sized
screen to play your favorite game?
The gadget itself might have room for a DVD drive (maybe, but we’ll discuss
that later). Current cell phones and eReaders have screens too small to display
very much information, so we’ll probably have some kind of gadget that unfolds
to offer a larger display, for, say, those of us who want to read more than one
paragraph at a time. Amazon’s Kindle is nice for reading, but still too small
for real computer functions like writing, spreadsheets, spiffy game displays, or
Internet surfing. And have you seen the size of the keys on the Kindle DX? Great
for mice-feet, I suppose, but hardly for human fingers. (Who do they test these
things on?) Hence the idea about unfolding. And when you open it up, you’ll have
a not-too-ridiculously small screen that will function as your computer
interface (screen) and e-reader. For a keyboard, the screen will display what
look like keyboard keys. The “keys” might even give you some sort of tactile
response, so you’ll know when you’ve actually hit one. In fact, just the other
night I saw an ad for (I think) Verizon about a nifty little device that
unfolds! Pretty cool, huh? Unfortunately, the keys are still the itsy-bitsy ones
you have on the average cell phone. So you won’t be doing anything practical
there. And, wait a minute, now that everyone has or craves the most gigantic TV
screen they can find, suddenly we’re going back to screens the size of a
whopping 3.5 inches?
As for the software, you won’t own that at all, so you won’t have a choice as
to whether or not you upgrade. Instead, you will have to rent the software from
the various providers, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, gaming companies, whomever. And
your helpful service provider will upgrade the software for you. (Remember when
I said cloud computing was the ultimate anti-piracy device?) Here’s an example.
I keep my email on the Yahoo server because I’m betting they keep their servers
in better shape than I do my computer. And I’m willing to upload my music
purchases to Amazon’s Cloud, but I’m also going to make damn sure I download
them to my own device. Because here we’re getting into the fine print.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Amazon. I have since the day I first heard of
it something like fifteen years ago, and it’s only gotten better in the
meantime. But Amazon is currently making a very big deal about how you
automatically get five gigabytes of music storage for free whenever you buy a
single MP3 download. If you buy an entire MP3 album, you automatically
get upgraded to twenty gigabytes of storage. Pretty keen, huh? Now let’s read
the fine print. If you click the “Learn more” button on Amazon’s main “cloud”
page, you find that the 20 GB upgrade is just for the first year. After that,
it’s $20 per year. Okay, twenty bucks isn’t that much, only about $1.70
a month. For now. But there are two problems here. The first is that you’re
going to be paying rent to the providers of every piece of software you use:
word processing, spreadsheets, desktop publishing, games, and just about
anything you’ve already bought. If you use software from a number of different
providers, those numbers are going to add up. But so what? You’re willing to pay
a few bucks a month, say ten or twenty or even thirty, adding up to, say,
between $120 and $360 a year. Still, not so bad. And here we come to problem the
second: wait until the providers decide to increase their prices. Or you use
more applications or store more data. But, even so, it’s still probably cheaper
or not much more in the long run than laying out $350 for a basic laptop. Which
can keep running for years.
But now we come to the nasty part. Remember all those Microsoft ads about how
you should be running their latest operating system on your computer? Vista?
Windows 7? Or Apple’s ads for OS 10? I’ve been in this business a long, long
time, and I can barely count the number of times some software manufacturer came
out with a new operating system or some new razzle-dazzle upgrade of their
software applications (We’re even starting to trash old versions of Microsoft
Office and operating systems.) And have you noticed how, purely by chance, I’m
sure, the new operating system won’t run on your current computer because you
don’t have a fast enough processor or enough RAM or a large enough hard drive?
Which means that you have to buy a new computer IF (and that’s a very big “if”)
you want or, more importantly, need to run the latest and greatest
operating system and software.
So far, hardware and software purchases, have made up a big part of the
various manufacturers’ revenue. But some people might not want to upgrade. Some
people might think the already bloated-beyond-belief version of Microsoft Word
is just fine and dandy for them. But, as go operating systems, so go the
programs (applications). And soon, not immediately, but soon, the requirements
of the operating systems and the software applications won’t be compatible with
your current Internet appliance. Recently, after two days on the phone with
Adobe trying to figure out why my CS2 version of GoLive (the HTML editor I use
to maintain this web site) wouldn’t install on my new laptop, it turns out that
GoLive isn’t compatible with Windows 7 (which came with the new laptop), and I
should upgrade to Adobe’s Creative Suite 5.5 so I could (LEARN TO) run
Dreamweaver, which is ridiculously expensive for a simple web site. So I went
back and installed it on another laptop running Windows Vista. But it’s not just
Adobe, everyone will be doing the same thing. Get a new application, or even
upgrade an existing one, and suddenly, by golly, by gosh, you have to go buy
yourself a new Internet appliance, or laptop or operating system. And don’t
forget, you can’t run Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 unless you have at least 2
GB of RAM. See? A tiny tweak to the operating system or application or even your
Internet browser, and suddenly you’re out in the cold.
Remember when I said, “Think ‘cell phone.’”? So, how often do you buy a new
cell phone? How long a contract do you sign up for? We’re old and poor and cheap
these days, so when our two-year contract runs out, I usually go into the
Verizon store and say, “What new phones can I get with no money out of pocket?”
And, of course, the answer is always, “Nothing you’d want to own.” You
always want to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Now that I’ve retired
and am trying to make that long time dream of writing come true, anything I
write I could do perfectly well with any of the past four or five versions of
Word. In fact, now that we’re poor again, we’ve already converted two machines
to OpenOffice.org. After all, not only is it free, but all the files it creates
are completely compatible with those of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. But do you
know about OpenOffice.org? Do your friends? Of course not. OpenOffice.org is an
international, collaborative project developed by volunteers and available
online for free, so they don’t have multi-million-dollar advertising
budgets.
Security: the ugly
truth
And now we get to the really nasty part. According to a recent study
published in eWeek (a very reputable industry journal), something like
two-thirds of the “cloud” providers don’t consider the security of their
operating systems or applications, or, more importantly, the data you’ve stored
on their servers, to be their responsibility. Which means that you’re paying
them every month for systems and software that may or may not work and for
storing your data on servers that can be breached by any fairly talented
fifteen-year-old.
So now you own nothing, really, except a neat little device that you’ll have
to trade up every few years (and I’m being generous here; my real guess would be
more like every one or two years, just like cell phones). But, even worse than
being essentially a slave to the Internet and the storage and applications
providers, forking over your monthly dues, you won’t even have a guarantee about
the safety of your data or your music, your movies, your cherished family
photos, or anything else you store on the provider’s server.
The Anti-piracy
Solution
I know this all sounds fairly dire, and I know that everyone in the computer
biz is publicly saying, “Pish tosh, we would never do anything like that. You’re
just being backward, an old stick-in-the-mud. This is a great new idea. Everyone
will have the latest and greatest, and no one will ever, ever again copy and
distribute our software without bloody well paying for it.” And
that’s how the anti-piracy solution works. Because the software won’t reside on
your cool little Internet appliance; instead, you’ll have to log on to your
Internet provider to do something as simple as writing a letter. (At which
point, of course, Office Assistant will pop up and say, “It looks like you’re
writing a letter. Would you like some help?”)
So, you’re probably thinking, “Well, this stuff isn’t going to affect me.
Clouds are just for big companies.” Guess what facebook is? Yep, it’s a cloud.
Just like Twitter and WordPress and every social networking and blogging site
out there. So if you’re uploading your precious thoughts and photos or even
(Heaven fore fend) writing original stuff there, make sure you keep a copy for
yourself. Offline. On your hard drive. Or, better yet (because Robin’s Rule #2**
is that all drives fail eventually) on some external storage like a CD, DVD, or
flash drive.
The Word is
“Streaming”
Remember when I said your Internet appliance might not even have a DVD drive
for watching movies or playing games? That’s because the providers’ goal is to
control the broadcasting of everything. Whatever you currently do on your
computer you will have to do online. Bye-bye, DVDs. Bye-bye user independence.
Now, whenever you consider moving, your first thought will be, “How can I
connect to the Internet?”
And then there’s the money, and this is the perfect time to discuss the
money. Cloud computing is a brave new business model that magically transforms
purchasers into renters/subscribers. The manufacturers are trying to recapture
their revenue stream. Except that, in the future of cloud computing, that
revenue stream has turned from merely a highly lucrative stream into a
Mississippi-500-year-record-level flood, a surging river that will consume
everything in its path. Remember how we all used to be so impressed that the
Mississippi River was a whole mile wide? Well, this year it was three miles
wide. And raging. And headed straight for Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Now think
of that three-mile-wide surging river in terms of the amount of new money that
will start pouring into the silicon companies once cloud computing takes over.
They’ll tweak an operating system or modify a game and, oops, you’ve just lost
your Internet connection because your current “Internet appliance” isn’t
compatible with the new system. Which means you have to buy a new one. Because,
when it comes to connectivity, we’re all addicts. And the hardware and software
companies are the pushers.
Streaming and the
economy
Up to now, software of various kinds has generally been distributed on
physical media. Now, what if the software companies could eliminate the cost of
physical media? Imagine the savings they could achieve. Which I’m sure they’ll
pass on to you, the consumer. NOT. This is another very attractive reason for
the software companies to switch to streaming distribution. Everything is live.
Nothing is fixed. Which also means the elimination of all those jobs associated
with physical media. Think about the people who made the materials for the CDs
and DVDs that have been mailed out for all these years. Think about the people
who make the plastic for the discs themselves, and for the disc cases. Think
about the people who make the paper and the ink, and the people who make the
machines that produce the plastic and the discs and the paper and the ink. And
what about the people who make the mailers the discs go into? And the paper and
ink and adhesive for those mailers.
Sure, you’re saying, but streaming is so green. It eliminates the need for
all those physical materials. But what about the people who make those
materials? You want to go further? Think about the reduced demand on the postal
system, and the clerks, sorters, and mail carriers who deliver those materials.
Then think about how they’ll buy the clothes they wear and those comfy shoes
they have to buy, and the people who make all those clothes and shoes, and the
people who make the cloth and thread and leather and plastic and vinyl and
zippers and buttons, and so on and on and on.
The Ultimate
Paradigm Shift: Welcome to Incorporeality
So, when you think about cloud computing in these terms, suddenly it’s not
just ownership that’s going out the window. Suddenly it’s a shift from the
physical (the corporeal) to the non-physical (the incorporeal) and all that
incorporeality comprises. As it is, even the amount of actual cash we use is
dwindling as everything becomes electronic. So what about the jobs of the people
who make the paper and the ink and the wrappers and the machines that print,
count, sort, store, and package money?
Each shift away from corporeality to incorporeality means a loss of jobs,
especially the loss of jobs involved in the production of stuff. Real, physical
stuff. And the loss of those jobs means a reduction in the overall demand for
stuff that other people produce. It’s not just a vicious circle; it’s a downward
spiral. And with the world’s population still spinning out of control, there
will be more and more people willing to work for less and less money, depressing
wages in every industry. It’s one of the first things you learn in economics
classes: supply-and-demand doesn’t just apply to just prices of stuff, it
applies to labor (read: jobs), as well. The more production, the more jobs. The
less production, the fewer jobs. And, hence, less demand for labor, at which
point, with the supply of labor increasing, but the demand for labor decreasing,
the average wage, which is the intersection of the supply of labor and the
demand for that labor, plummets. This is what economists refer to as the theory
of surplus labor. And that’s the effect of this particular paradigm shift.
Disclaimer
Now, please, feel free to disregard everything I’ve said. No one ever
believes me when I predict things. There was once a Trojan princess named
Cassandra to whom Apollo gave the gift of prophecy, with the catch that, while
she could see the future, no one would ever believe her. Way back around 1994, I
asked a Microsoft rep when we’d be able to query databases over the Internet.
His response was, “Why would you want to?” Well, guess what runs Amazon.
Databases. Same as every Internet storefront you shop at. Same as the Internet
Movie (look, it’s even in the name) Database. So call me Cassandra, but don’t
say I didn’t warn you.
* The phrase “paradigm shift” first entered the common language when Thomas
S. Kuhn published his landmark book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, all the way back in 1962.
**Robin’s Rule #1 is: “Never pass a law you can’t enforce.” Just in case you
were wondering.