Below you will find part of an email I received from a friend. It was titled "Changes Are Coming". One of the changes identified was the "Things That You Own". I believe that this applies to some of what we are learning in 23 Things. Specifically, opening accounts on line to save things or share things. My opinion? Very scary! No privacy anymore??? Do we lose control???
The Things That You Own
Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
Interesting questions. A few months ago, there was a licensing issue with a book (Animal Farm by George Orwell) that people bought on their Kindles. Amazon was actually able to pull the book off of the people's personal Kindles without them knowing. They offered store credits, but I don't think that would have made me happy. I think that the definition of what we "own" is definitely being blurred by new technologies.
ReplyDeleteI guess somethings can be exciting, scary and cool all at the same time! That incident with Amazon really made me think twice about purchasing a Kindle, but I might save up enough someday to get an E-reader of some sort to use when traveling.
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