The Cloud, and why it is so important

Cloud futures

View more documents from Graeme Wood.

The first time I heard Kevin Kelly talk about the move from millions of computers connected BY the internet to one computer that IS the interent, in his TED video on The Next 5000 Days of the Internet, a lot of cloud/semantics/NLP/mobile ideas started to converge in my head, and the more time has passed since, the smarter I think the description is.

Microsoft know that cloud computing is a fundamental part of their future as a software, advertising, and increasingly hardware business, so when I was asked to introduce a cloud/futurology session at a Microsoft conference at our place, Kevin Kelly's views on machine intelligence seemed a suitably controversial place to start. I've posted my slides with some notes - all views and challenges appreciated!

Future of the Internet

Kevin Kelly on the next 5000 days of the web. This is on the basis that as of December 2007, when this was filmed, the web was 5000 days old, and he explains how based on processing power, memory and number of links, we have built something that is roughly equivalent to one human brain in that time. Then he applies Moore's Law.

So over the next 5000 days, we will not see cloud computing in the sense that it is usually portrayed, where all those lots of machines that we have at the moment just shift their storage and systems onto the network - instead, we'll see those machines just become screens into one single worldwide machine.



Personally I just get excited by the whole Matrixness of this, but the analogy that I really love (and the reference I followed up from Faris to find this clip) is an improvement on 'social media is like air'. It is this: The most comparable technology to the internet is the alphabet: it utterly transformed communication and data recording, and we take it for granted to such an extent that it is invisible.

Google Apps 1 - Microsoft Office 1 less

(from readwriteweb)
One US CTO, with a stated aim of making his local governmental organisation operate more like a start-up, has confirmed that he will be switching from Microsoft Office to Google Apps for all day to day emailing, spreadsheets, word processing, etc. Although this is only a total of 38,000 fewer desktops for the Microsoft empire, what is significant is the organisation: the District of Columbia. Although this is only District employees rather than national government, so won't be the email client of choice for obama@whitehouse.gov just yet, it is a significant symbol that web-based computing is reaching tipping point with large organisations.

On a related note, I'm currently trying to find the best combination of Zoho apps to provide an agency-wide planning portal - basically an upload and tag function. Hopefully form a post next week if I can make it work....