When I was young, my family usually had whatever microcomputer was reasonably current. Personal computers were liberating; one would own both the computer and data. The alternative was going through a data processing service and owning neither. While DP bureaus had more capable machines, processing time was vastly more expensive, and there were few guarantees. If one switched DP bureaus, it involved purchasing data back, on tape, at a premium.
Thirty years later, personal computers are less expensive and more capable than they ever have been. The internet is pervasive and even Canadian cellular data rates have been reduced to within shouting distance of reasonable. However, sharing data in anything other than a traditional LAN environment is a nightmare. If it is even possible, it usually involves a third party service.
So why is networking such a pain? Plausibly, many people still have a mental image of the internet as some big computer somewhere that looks like a large black monolith. This massive computer and all the data on it belongs to some corporation or government agency, and subscribers pay to access it. Both internet service providers and traditional media agencies profit from this misconception. The ISPs get to oversell their product: Look at all this neat stuff you get from us, and only us. Traditional media get to reinforce the concept that media is something you consume, rather than create or participate in.
The internet is — by design — a peer to peer network. Any computer connected to the internet can host a service as easily as it can connect to one, providing their ISP permits it. It was a considerable break from traditional network systems that were purely client-server. One could only host a service — only receive connections — when paying exorbitant fees to be considered a server rather than a client. The perception of the internet as a ‘thing’ devalues what it actually is: a place, a community, a network in the truest sense of the word.
We are in the age of participatory media! We blog, we podcast, we post videos of ourselves. But we do it through centralized services. Many of us blog through livejournal or blogger. We post videos through youtube or google video. We are participating, but only with the approval of larger entities. If youtube closed up tomorrow, how would you get your video back? How would you share it?
Cloud computing is a brilliant rebranding of the DP bureau model. It implies freedom and openness. It implies portability and nomadic computing; after all, when you leave a cloud you still have everything you brought with you. And truthfully, many of these services are free or cheap. But they come with no guarantees, no portability, no way of getting our data back. They provide a community space, but one that is wholly owned. Cloud computing pretends to be an open park, but it is more akin to a shopping mall.
Modern social networking has changed the way we interact as a community, and for the better. But we are still playing in someone else’s sandbox. Regaining ownership of our data is possible, but it requires decentralization and federation, and a lot of software that hasn’t had to exist yet. And it would be messy. But it would be ours, and it would stay ours.
