A post by Barb Darrow at GigaOM caught my eye this week: “Woz worries about cloud computing”
It caught my eye because, you may have guessed, his dire warnings are EXACTLY why I created ownCloud two years ago. So many people are giving away their rights – to privacy, to ownership, to control and security – via the cloud that I agree with Woz – “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.
With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to. I want to feel that I own things … A lot of people feel, ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer,’ but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”
Exactly.
Why shouldn’t you own, control and secure – and keep private – what’s yours? Why should you pay for simplicity with these things. You shouldn’t. There are tools now – I know, because we built them – that give you, your employees, you friends and family and your customers, the ability to quickly, easily and cheaply share and synch files without losing control. In fact, ownCloud integrates into the tools most IT departments already have to secure, track and report data and data usage.
More and more devices, more and more data, greater connectivity – listen to Woz, he’s been right before and he’s right now.
