Google has changed the landscape of technology. Would that be an understatement? My husband, David sent me a link to an article from a friend of ours who is the IT Manager for the Dalai Lama, Jim Skyler. We've know him for years and he's quite the "Thought Leader".
He's talking about "Identity" in his post, however it brought up different thoughts for me. If we move from keeping all our "data" near and dear on our own computers....to having it out there in the technosphere, what then do we really own? You have to read his post.
The question is that through "Google Docs" and various other shared platforms including the blogging world, the Twitter and Facebook world we are approaching having a huge investment and our data out there. It's all on servers that we don't own. So....we no longer own our own work.
Do you have a system for backing up your posts here for ActiveRain. I don't! Should I? I think so. While I have some redundancy in some of my posts....I always write live on-line and post. I am going to start to rethink that.
ActiveRain has never lost any of my data that I am aware of. However, Acts of God not withstanding it might be a good idea to write your post off-line and then transfer and format. I'm not so worried about my identity (Jim agrees).....I feel that for me that has grown with Social Networking and the current technologies that help us do cool stuff.
David and I both laughed when it was implied that if you are still sending documents by email....time has passed you by. Well, maybe so...however I would also point out that rather than seeing ourselves divested of our data and our Identity....why can't we see the desktop with enough power that we can now download data banks for our use in turning that data into information and knowledge for our use. I like my version better.
The one idea I did like is that the iphone is so powerful you may not need your laptop for meetings and such. Oh boy....here we go!
Food for thought...that is for sure!
Cloud computing is here to stay and growing all the time.
I personally like it and am using it more and more.
Just when I think I understand some of the technology you leap ahead of me and it takes me a while to catch up again .
I never really thought about what would happen to my blogs. I am not sure I like to think about it. But now I am going to have to. Thanks I think
there is a great article about cloud computing in the weeks Business Week...it gives a great look at Cloud computing accross the board
Jeanean - You make excellent points. I had wondered about this, just the other day. What if one of the social networks were to simply decide to stop archiving beyond a certain date. It would likely to be advantageous to have our own back up storage of blogs/writings, etc. I use an external hard-drive for my personal backup purposes. But must admit that very little that I have blogged has actually been stored.