Is your brain cluttered with precious memories and brilliant ideas? Why not store it in the cloud? In the beginning were humans and humans were computers. Even a simple mathematical calculation and a tiny storage of data consume huge processing power of the human brain. With the passing of time, crunching of information became simpler with the advent of computers and storage of information became easier with the introduction of cloud services but these developments threaten the way humans live and operate. This is the general theme of the book “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google”.
In his book, Nicholas Carr argues that just like electricity, which was once produced and owned by businesses for their own use later became available to everybody by public utilities, computing services is also turning into a utility. He also discusses about the drastic changes happening in the society, culture, economics and business brought on by the development of new technologies. The grand theme of the book corresponds well with 1 Ludwig Siegele’s overview about the importance of cloud computing in his report titled “Let It Rise” published in The Economist:
“The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will undoubtedly transform the information technology industry, but it will also profoundly change the way people work and companies operate. It will allow digital technology to penetrate every nook and cranny of the economy and of society, creating come tricky political problems along the way”
Carr’s writing is persuasive, entertaining and he has an excellent story-telling skill and proves himself to be a well-read historian. He brilliantly compares the modern technological devel...
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.... The grid wins”
Works Cited
1 Extract is taken from the special report published by The Economist on cloud computing titled “Let it Rise” by Ludwig Siegele. http://www.economist.com/node/12411882 [Published October 23, 2008]
2 “Living in the cloud”: The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr, p. 105 [Published January 2008]
3 Quoted by Scott McNealy, Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/scott_mcnealy.html
4 From the chapter “Burden’s Wheel” of “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr, p. 12 [Published January 2008]
5 The Myth of the Machine, vol. 2, The Pentagon of Power by Lewis Mumford [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970]
6 Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman, p. 127 [Vintage; 1st Edition, 1993]
7 From the chapter “Burden’s Wheel” of “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr, p. 16 [Published January 2008]
Technology has been around as long as people have and has been advancing ever since. It is the reason that we have access to the miraculous tools that we do today. From the forks that we eat our supper with to the cars that get us from place to place technology is everywhere. However, with technology advancing at such a rapid pace, it could pose a threat to our future society. In the short stories “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet, the authors describe how bleak society could become if we do not take precautions when using technology.
Workers are also not being used to their full potential as the majority of the IT budget is going towards them to maintain the current system that they have in place. Carr determines that these problems can be fixed with relative ease by combining three different technologies, Web services, virtualization, and grid computing. The combination will allow for less technology to be wasted and processing power to be used to its full capacity. He tells the reader, this is what the individual will have to do to advance the information technology environment to its fullest potential and continues by listing examples of some of the possible corporations and sources from where this individual could come from, including big computing hardware contributors, information technology hosting operations, an internet extraordinaire and new start up innovators. He concludes the article by pointing out that as dubious as this may be, many other innovations similar to this started the same way and people should not fear to take action on this opportunity, as it will better humanity. I believe that the article provides some good points as it shows us that the
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Bra... ... middle of paper ... ... ed. Bailliere Tindall. London: 1985.
7. “What cloud computing really means.” By Eric Knorr, Galen Gruman. Accessed. 21 November 2013. < http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031 >
" From utopia to dystopia: technology, society and what we can do about it." OpenSecurity, 20 Dec. 2013. Web. The Web.
One of the most crucial reasons one enterprise choses cloud computing is costing. Some research claimed that the cloud computing is cost-effective because it is charged on pay-as-you-go basis (Brumec and Vrcek, 2013). That means a user will pay the amount which are equal to the user’s usage. Vanmechelen et al. (2013) believes such a model will provide flexibility that ensures the user to avoid investing to excess. However, this statement fails to explain some phenomenon in reality. Set MemSQL, which is a San Francisco outfit, as an instance. When MemSQL first started up, it was based on cloud computing Amazon.com, just like what most tech enterprises in Silicon Valley did. But it gave up using Amazon cloud only two years after its foundation and returned most of its operation back to traditional computers. Eric Frenkiel, the CEO of MemSQL, announced the reason why it off the cloud was the bills from Amazon was getting bigger and bigger. “I’m not a big believer in the public cloud. It’s just not effective in the long run”, he said (Metz, 2013). The Frenkiel’s word is only able to present his own opinion. Based on what MemSQL has experienced, ...
In summary, both the article and the novel critique the public’s reliance on technology. This topic is relevant today because Feed because it may be how frightening the future society may look like.
Sykes, Dennis J. "Welty's The Worn Path." Explicator 56.3 (1998): 151. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
ISTF, JUCC. "Background of Cloud Computing." Network Computing. Computing Services Centre, 27 06 2011. Web. 2 Apr 2014.
According to John Horvat, an author in The Wall Street Journal, " The proper use of technology is that it should be a means to serve us and make our lives easier. A key requirement is that we should be in control." Although, the problem with today`s society, is that we are not in control. Instead of technology serving us, it is now the other way around. Society has been more dependent on its technology in recent years, than it has ever been in the past. Those who are against the up rise of the technology industries, believe that technology has taken away ...
In cloud computing, the word cloud is used as a metaphor for “the internet”. So the cloud computing means “a type of internet-based computing”, where different services such as servers, storage and applications are delivered to an organization’s computers and devices through the internet.