Taken at face value, “the cloud” appears to be something that would benefit us, both economically and environmentally. It’s clear from the list above that I personally benefit from all these powerful free tools and services. But, when I consider how “the cloud” benefits us collectively, I’m starting to feel skeptical. Even the concept of “the cloud” itself bothers me slightly. It implies a light, airy place (off of the planet, conveniently), where we have seemingly unlimited storage. But when we save information to “the cloud,” what we’re really doing is storing content on a server somewhere- a physical machine- maintained by one of the companies offering their web tools to you. Far from the light, fluffy, natural space we’d prefer to envision, these data centers are not even remotely cloud-like; they are vast clusters of machines spread over acres in a single, climate-controlled, power-sucking facility. As our dependency upon web tools grows, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google will have to build even more data centers than they already have to support us.
It’s Time to Start a Digital Conservation Movement. Read more about this in Part 2 of The Future of the Web.
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