Logic’s End

An Essential Tool for Cloud Computing

What is the single most desperate problem with our reliance on information technology? Computers fail. There are several sound ways to prepare for failure, but they all have one thing in common: a measure of human diligence, timeliness and an element of chance. It doesn’t matter whether you spend $100 or $10,000, data is never guaranteed safe.

No matter how frequently one backs up that data, there is a tangible risk of loss. Hard drives die, compact discs warp, and both are easily misplaced. Moreover, software changes, becoming incompatible with saved data over time. The rapidly growing trend of so-called “Cloud Computing” promises to ease our burden by making valuable data more independent from our machines, although it is by no means a panacea.

We’ve been computing in the cloud to varying degrees for decades. However, with faster connections, cheaper storage and increasingly portable computers (netbooks), the practice is catching on in ways never thought possible. It started with services such as HotMail and Yahoo Mail. With either of them, email was safe and accessible (notwithstanding spam), so long as you didn’t have more than 25MB.

From a web once dominated by static HTML sites and complex search indexes rose companies like Google with their world-renown search technology. Microsoft and Yahoo cleared the skies for cloud computing, but it was Google that blasted across them. What was once unheard of became commonplace. Consumers could sign up for Google Mail and receive a virtually limitless amount of storage for their daily email. Email made was safe for many, but what about our files and programs? The public slowly grew accustomed to cloud computing, setting the stage for truly grand pursuits.

While cloud computing may also be referred to as the use of web applications or network computing, neither have the same ring. From a business standpoint, if a concept is going to take hold, its name often makes or breaks the deal. The alliteration of cloud computing rolls off the tongue with ease, making it an IT marketing manager’s dream! A cloud implies much more than email or file storage. It envisions an ethereal world of limitless possibilities. So what exactly does it offer us, and how does it keep our data safe and make us technologically independent?

Imagine the grim scenario where your house or apartment is lost in fire. Your computer is reduced to ash, and that shiny backup drive with your entire life’s worth of documents and photos shares the same fate. Even if you own a laptop, chances are that your still in a pretty tight spot at that point.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t take such extreme circumstances to yield similarly disastrous results. Accidentally dropped your laptop? Hard drive clicking? Desktop shorted out after a storm? Either way you’ll be scrambling to pick up the pieces. Assuming you can save the data, you’re still faced with reinstalling and reconfiguring all of the software, which often entails hours of downloading. What if all of your applications and files lived on the Internet and were accessed them on demand? Such is the promise of cloud computing as enjoyed in-part by early adopters of web email.

Google Chrome is on the horizon, and it promises to begin a shift toward complete cloud computing. A laptop with Google Chrome will require an Internet connection, but it accesses all programs and data over that connection. Lose that laptop or back over it with a forklift? That’s okay because when you get another you may instantly resume working right where you left off! Cloud apps: Google Docs, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Pandora (my personal favorite) form the cornerstones of the movement. It’s a notion no longer foreign to old industry juggernauts. Microsoft is now touting Office Live, which offers free online creation, use, and storage of Office documents (mirroring the functionality of Google Docs).

What’s the thunderhead of cloud computing? Hackers have already shown us with stolen Twitter, Facebook, and GMail accounts: risk is transferred from the physical storage to digital protection of your data. The world’s best security is rendered useless with passwords like “God” or “Password1″. Cloud computing or not, a little common sense applies to keep your data safe, sanity in check, and systems available.

The chances of breaking into your house and stealing that new laptop are relatively small, but by the same token the odds of a malicious robot from China cracking into a GMail account, wiping out emails, and stealing your identity are much higher. Some claim the dangers of cloud computing make it altogether too hazardous, therefore impractical. I tend to disagree vehemently. With a little forethought and a nod to basic security practices, one can easily underscore the benefits and avoid the drawbacks of computing in the cloud.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

-Benjamin Franklin

Cloud apps are money in the bank (a lot of them are free) and fewer things to worry about when your system fails (tip: don’t kid yourself, it will). Moreover, the requirements for computers capable of cloud computing are lower. Therefore once again saving us money; they inevitably cost less. Cloud computing: it saves time, money, and potentially a life’s worth of work. It’s safely accessible from anywhere in the world. If it’s liberation from consumer technology that you seek, then look no further.

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

—St. Thomas Aquinas

For months I’ve kept that quote on my Facebook profile in honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas, my most admired theologian. I’ve rarely given much thought as to what it really means or how it defines and shapes my life online and off. Having read and analyzed much of his most storied work, The Summa Theologica, his work has continued to focus and shape my thoughts and actions.

Reason, for Aquinas, is a unique human characteristic that allows us to understand and contemplate the greater meaning of things. Through proper application of reasonable thought, actions and words can help propel mankind toward its most fully developed state in nature: the greatest good or its Summa Bonum.

How does one determine if a habit or action propels a man toward the greater or greatest good? Reason and prudence are the lenses through which the habit in question must be examined. One has to ask if following such a course will overall provide for a more full, just, and generally happier human condition in practice. This is not to say that some things can be unreasonable, nor that reason itself can be manipulated to determine the greatest evil.

Take for example, the application of reason to traffic law. Is it not reasonable to drive on the right-hand side of the road in America today? Why is it reasonable? Is it simply because the law tells us what is right or wrong? If so, does that imply that the British are unreasonable because they chose to drive on the left-hand side? No. Humans are creatures of habit, and as such they all choose a side on which to drive. Driving on that side means you are less likely to crash and injur yourself, thus it’s a reasonably safe practice of habit. The law is reasonable because it recognizes that habit and reinforces it.

How then, does reason apply to technology and its multitudinous applications? Is a technology reasonable just because it exists? Take blogging for example: is it reasonable to create a blog about hacking government servers just because the technology is there for you to do such a thing? While I’m on that thought, I could highlight the nature of security technologies too. Is it reasonable to track the movements of every individual throughout the country just because we have the technology that allows such a monumental task? I would say that it is not. The way technology is impacts people’s everyday habits and lives is the true measure of its reasonableness. 

If a man is passionate about improving the process of computer programming, then it is reasonable that he blog about that subject to reflect upon and refine his thoughts. If he’s motivated to bring community groups together both online and offline, then it’s reasonable for him to blog about topics that concern his community. Whatever one uses the technology for, it’s reasonable insofar as it recognizes a common, just, and well-established human habit that leads to a greater good for mankind.

So how, specifically, are computer programming, internet marketing, social media, and blogging reasonable then? Are they then rendered unreasonable because they are fundamentally new activities? Have I proven myself false? The truth is quite the contrary. All of those things are digital expressions of human habits that have existed for countless centuries, well before the technologies that form them were a glimmer on the distant horizon.

One could trace computer programming back as far as the invention of the Chinese abacus. Internet marketing, fundamentally the act of selling a product or service, has been around as long as time has been recorded. Social media, the act of forming groups of friends and close-knit communities, is a centuries old human process too. How about blogging then? The distillation and development of thoughts and ideas with a keyboard and monitor differs very little from the use of paper and pen at the end of the day.

As reasonable habits, the prudence of their use can be understood and evaluated. In practice one must determine if they hold true to producing a greater good for society. One could form a social media hate group, a marketing scam, or an anarchy blog. Any of those things would produce a greater evil or state of decay rather than a greater good.