Steve Wozniak at home (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes that cloud computing is not the panacea that some want you to think it is.
Speaking after the penultimate performance in Washington of Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," a controversial look at Apple's labor conditions in China, Wozniak was reported to say:
"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."
He added: "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away" through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to.
"I want to feel that I own things," Wozniak said. "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."
While I share Wozniak's concern about how we seem to be renting or borrowing content these days rather than owning it outright -- although in reality we've been renting software and media for years -- I do believe that the cloud plays a pivotal role in the future of computing, both at the enterprise level and for home users.
One of the great uses for the cloud is backup. While the recent hack of iCloud shows that no system is foolproof -- and that Apple needs to tighten up security significantly to keep hackers out -- we shouldn't let this cloud our judgement (pun intended).
For the average user at least, the dangers of losing data through accidental deletion, hardware failure or even malware attack -- malware that deletes user data is quite rare nowadays -- far outweighs the dangers posed by hacker attack.
The cloud has its place, but as with most things it's not a single answer to every problem.
