The Invisible Hand of The Cloud

01/06/12 11:51

By the end of this month Apple will stop with MobileMe. The iCloud will be in its place and everything and everybody will be connected to everything and everybody else. The cloud will be the medium for storage, information exchange, updates, backups and what else we might want to do and not know about it yet. The cloud is like an invisible hand that can grab things out of nowhere back onto your computer or store images from your computer somewhere in space.
But just like everything else this got a downside as well. Those of you who have an Apple computer, phone or tablet and are on iCloud might have experienced also the somewhat scary hand that takes hold of your computer. You might be working just as normal on your computer and suddenly mailboxes get moved around in your mail program or safari feels like there is a knot in the internet and data can’t get through or your contacts in the address book change in numbers or suddenly mix up names and phone numbers. Most likely you are experiencing the invisible hand of the cloud. Someone in Cupertino might be working on iCloud and massing up your address book or emails. But these are only the examples when we can see that something is happening from outside in our computer. What else is happening? What else is this invisible hand doing when entering our space through the cloud and changes and takes whatever it wants?
Orson Wells might say, I told you that would happen, but what can we do? The cloud is the future and already the present, but were we asked? I find it scary and it irritates me when just somebody in Cupertino is able to interfere with my computer and I can’t do anything about it, have to stop working and waiting that this person got into somebody else’s computer.
Any ideas how to deal with that?

P.S. Not only Apple is the cloud, all others are too.

Ute Sonnenberg, www.rohoyachui.com