The Cloud! (Eng)

I have to start by apologizing to all my readers for abandoning this blog. There were MANY things I wanted to write, but never got the time to do it. Well, you know how it is... we have time, just the managing part is lacking at times. I'll try to write more often, both in English and Romanian but I can't promise.

But then again, let's jump to the subject. Like most of you out there, I started using different cloud services more and more. Anything from Google Docs to Picasa, Music, YouTube and so on. I am entrusting more and more of my content to faceless companies, sleeping tight at night, knowing that my memories (pictures, movies), mood setters (music) and other sort of personal data is well "taken care of". In addition to that, paper books are being replaced more and more by their digital "e" books and these too are stored in the cloud. 

Sure it is convenient! Hard Drives fail and data gets lost. We can forget to back-up data locally and many people are not used to automated back-up software. There are so many reasons to use cloud services instead of local storage and there are so many reasons in countless articles around the web that I will not enumerate them here too.

On the other hand, take a step back and think about it. I know I did. People that know me, are aware that I am a very strong advocate (verbally at least) against companies such as Facebook or Apple that impose severe limits on what you can do with YOUR OWN data, or use it in many wrong ways for their own benefit. You also know that I am sort of a Google fan for providing alternatives to these very popular companies/services in a much more transparent and fair manner. Then again, who can guarantee that Google will stay a "Don't be evil" company forever? It is a corporation like any other and as such, it has all the rights (under US law) that an individual has, but no moral values or responsibilities associated with an actual individual. And even if Google or other fair companies out there remain true to their "customers", they still have to obey the law of the land and do whatever a superior power (read government) asks them to do.

About 15-18 years ago when the Internet was in it's infancy, it was hailed, applauded and cheered by many around the world for the censor and control free environment it provided. We were able to make ourselves heard and we were able to bypass controlled media using this wonder of modern society.

History is nice and all, but times are changing and it's for the worse. While the birth of the internet gave humans a brief and broad freedom of speech and a way to organize for whatever means, in it's maturity, the Internet is going the way of the traditional media. Recent political events around the world, from "Arab Spring" to "Occupy" and the London Riots proved governments that a free, uncensored Internet is a power they don't want to deal with. Legislation is in the works in the western world to give governments the ability to block whatever content they deem "evil" on the internet.

Right now, it might not affect you personally. You can use still "open" DNS servers, access websites by mirrors and so on. To get back on track about my idea on Cloud Storage, imagine this:

All your personal life consisting of pictures and videos, e-mails(letters), accounting, work and private documents, music you like to listen to and full contacts list is stored "out there" in the cloud. At this stage, when you think about it, you will say "ah, he thinks about privacy". No, I am not as that is a different topic/issue. I am thinking about content that goes "poof!"...

Let's say there is this hit song that has a strong political message. It happened before in the 1960's and as times get more troubles, it makes sense for it to happen again. A video or picture you take that will cause a bit of a stir... or any other type of content (including a post like this one) will be stored on the web, in a centralized manner. This was not happening in the 20th century of before that because of the limitations of technology. Songs were on many LP's and by the time the message bothered "someone", it was impossible to get them all destroyed. Pictures and articles were printed in newspaper and before media companies were in the hand of a few corporations, they were not censored at the source. Once thousands of newspapers were spread among the public, getting rid of that was close to impossible. Before that, totalitarian governments and organizations (yes, the Church did it too) used to have nice street parties with booze, music and Book Burning - yay!

I think you see what I am doing here.

There are all the signs that our beloved western society is going the road every single culture went in history. A new elite was born in the last century, it got hold of power and is now ignoring it's population. As always, this will lead to silencing the "dissidents" and removing unwanted ideas from the public's reach.

Imagine that very cool and mind stimulating song got deleted one day. It only existed in the cloud and by a few keystrokes it's gone. The article that got published with it's pictures was shared and re-shared and overnight it gets deleted and erased from existence altogether. I can go on and on with this. From fabricating an event in someone's life by altering a picture with no "original" to prove it's a fake to much more. Does the piece with the picture sound strange? There are already "cloud" cameras on the market. My phone has an option to automatically upload any picture I take to my G+ account. It's a matter of time before internal storage is removed in the name of uselessness and cost saving.

In other words, don't use the cloud exclusively, keep copies of what you really need in a local storage.