In an age when we’re all increasingly obsessed with climate change it seems a new kind of cloud has emerged, or at least been re-imagined with appealing clarity. Whether it suggests ecological disaster or not remains to be seen.
Once upon a time, actually only a decade or so ago but it already feels like part of web folklore, horizon watchers forecast that the future of computing would be remote thin clients utilising networked data storage. Or in plainspeak, we’d all be using basic terminals which plugged into the resources of vast central servers. Indeed IBM once said that in the future there will only be 4 computers.
We can’t help but greet that particular vision with some ambivalence but the brave new paradigm is already here in a variety of guises from virtual computing, online apps, web 2.0 and of course Google apps. Perhaps the mother of all networks hasn’t yet fully coalesced but it may not be that far off.
It’s been a recurring story for a long time but a number of issues such as excessive costs, security concerns, usability difficulties and limited reliability of access prevented it becoming a reality – especially because those who were asked to pay or demanded ‘mission critical’ usage couldn’t be certain of it’s reliability. However, thanks in part to coding and technological advances and most importantly the dramatic fall in the cost of networking and hardware infrastructure these factors are now largely overcome.
Computers and handheld devices such as the iPhone (and to be fair many, many other mobile devices) are increasingly used as an interface to access online resources and applications e.g. Facebook, streaming content, google maps, etc.
What’s more this reliance on browser-based interfaces is reflected in the ongoing browser-type interface convergence we’ve been witnessing in the Windows, Apple, and Linux OS GUI’s over the last few years. There are clearly far-reaching usability implications behind that convergence. However, it is another development exploiting and developing that browser convergence that we think is even more interesting in terms of the likely long-term impact on the computing, mobile and software industries as a whole.
Google’s new (and clearly still very much a beta) browser Chrome is the closest thing yet realised that begins to emulate the desktop experience, but in this instance imagine a desktop computer with all the information and processing power of Google and in time the portability of Android behind it.
Whilst some may still be impressed by Microsoft and Apple’s domination of the confluence of the web, mobile and desktop arenas Google may be on the verge of breaking down the distinction between them all.
Whether it’s just a matter of time before this coelescing of power into the hands of a few is investigated by the monopolies commission or not the rate of change in terms of in terms of the continuing structural shift that is ocurring in the online, computing and mobile world is truly incredible.
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