There you go. Lots of responses - views, feedback, contradictory views and they all made my day. As I was talking about how the cute cloud could help us make our lives easier, I unknowingly forgot about one important aspect - a feeling lot of us have about technology - that it is BAD for us and has made our lives robotic. We'll come to that eventually but let’s first talk about all the things people expect from the cute cloud. This has of course come from the feedback everyone gave me.
1. The Refrigerator - Well, I think the refrigerator idea has been tested as a part of the networked home concept a few years ago. Only thing is, we didn’t see it coming out of those labs at all. But yes, the cute cloud could make this transformation from lab to our homes easier.
-> Doable
2. True Plug n play - I want it too! Every device either has or can have its unique identification which can be mapped with an online db for a matching driver which can be downloaded and installed automatically before you start using it. But there's a catch, a lot would need to be done on the trusted hardware and software lists, blacklisted IDs have to be tracked so that you don’t end up crashing your PC/Lappy just because of the automatic driver download feature.
-> Doable
2. SaaS applications - Well, Security as a Service (SaaS) is already one of the marked offerings that the Cloud providers are looking forward to. If successful, this will generate a lot of revenues for the providers and lot of savings for the subscribers. Why "If successful"? Because it is about Security, of information, resources etc - Isn’t that tricky enough to be given into the hands of a provider unless you trust it like you trust your mother????
-> Doable
3. Medical Science or Services (amazing suggestion I must say) - A cloud based medical facilitation could revolutionalize the entire way we get or give medical services to people. Recently, we heard about a top of the market Video Conferencing product being used for medical consultation or even remotely guided surgeries. Now look at what all do we need for this kind of technology to reach rural areas of any developing nation. We need network connectivity and bandwidth; we need the hardware, the software for enabling the service subscription and management. Of course we would need people to manage it but people are not technology.
-> Doable from technology point of view.
If we look at the technology part, it is nothing impossible in today's world. Service providers can provide ample bandwidth anywhere in the country if they want to. It is only a matter about money and will. Both will come from people. So, in fact, the bottleneck in bringing the best of medical services to the rural areas or small towns is not technology. It is the People - WE.
Start from the Govt whose people may not have the vision or will to do this. Then, look at the Service providers who may not extend an inch of their network until they see exponential profits. Then the techies like us. Would we be ready to take a job in rural areas to setup and maintain this service for the people there? I doubt it. Another solution, we can go and set it up, train local people to manage it and come back. This way you also generate some local jobs. And after all, you would still be wired via the cloud isn’t it?
This has become intense I must say. Can't help it. Its just the feedback I received. Now, there have been some questions about whether these claims about cloud based services are really going to take off. All I can say is - it ain't an easy pitch but you can score here if you keep batting and not loose your wicket. Lots needed, high bandwidths, software licensing paradigm change, Quality of networks needs to be 6 sigma level atleast and so on and so forth.
There was a comment about human aspects of this machine world but it looks like it is again pointing at technology. I mean, when did a television prevent you from sitting on the dinning table with your family. It may be only your addiction of the soaps or reality shows which is preventing you to dine with the family. Peace and Happiness. Lets take one at a time.
Peace in today's context can be best achieved by communication and think about all the ways technology has helped you to communicate. Happiness - Well one way I get happy is whenever I buy any new gadget. But thats just me. Think about all those parents whose kids live abroad and when technologies like internet based video chat enables them to see their grand children online, face to face. Imagine the happiness that shows in their smiles. I'm not saying that technology can give you Peace and Happiness whenever you want but it sure does contribute whenever we want it too. Technology can take the role of anything you want. You cannot apply your ethics and morals to technology. You need to apply them on yourselves not your mobile phone or your computer. Think about it :-).
I could go on forever but lets keep some of this for future posts. Meanwhile please share your comments, views on the blog. Till we meet again, Happy Reading and Keep Up With Technology!
Cheers
N E O
very nice article about the things around it...
ReplyDeletegood one...keep it up...
Nicely said. Within IBM, I work in a team called Specialized & Cloud Services in a Security MSS. So I can speak from the providers point of view a little bit. The first thing needed to provide cloud services to people and communities in developing nations is infrastructure as you mentioned. However, infrastructure doesn't come cheaply and does not get implemented over-night. Unless! There is a big push or support behind it from a company that has the capital and interest to fund such a service. So in this case I would say, that providers like us although only providing for other enterprise customers for now, will eventually have competitor providers that will offer cloud services to consumers at affordable rates. In my opinion, the fastest way to achieve this is to first get the big business in a developing country to invest and believe in cloud computing services. Big companies have big budgets and can throw down some cash to create infrastructure to get a service like this started. Once infra is in place, it would take a few years before it's standardized enough to become available to consumers at an affordable level.
ReplyDeleteGetting Enterprise companies of developing nations to get interested in this technology is key here.
Now I do hear or feel a sense of resistance from many individual consumers and enterprises about the concept of cloud computing. As in, the idea of having all of your data on a server somewhere and not having actual physical security bound access to it. The feeling of not being able to control your private information, or that, that information can be potentially compromised is a legitimate fear. However, this is the way of technological evolution. We are always afraid of what is new and unexplored. We will need to overcome this eventually. But again, if bigger companies can adopt to this idea and technology and setup safeguards in place to maintain such a service properly, they would set positive examples for the rest of the consumer community.
Way to go on starting such an article Gaurav, it makes for a neat discussion.
very gud article and must say worth reading it with very gud facts especially "human aspects of this machine" somehow very true and agree too as everything under the sun has pros and cons attached to it but actually it totally depends how we use that ....but must say very gud article and keep writing it.
ReplyDelete