Slashdot Mirror
Deprecating the Datacenter?
m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
It's like the myth that computers will create a paperless society. Computers just help us create more stuff to put on the paper. Sure you could bring a computer with you everywhere, and distribute everything on the internet, so we wouldn't need to use paper. It sounds like a nice idea, but in reality, it never ends up happening that way.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
From what I've seen in the datacenter sector is growly rapidly. More and more data is being stored online in server farms. Online apps are more prevalent than ever (eg Gmail).
With ever increasing network capacity data storage on the PC will become redundant.
Anyone who's done any serious research into long term archival media will tell you the same thing. If you want access to your records 100 years from now, put them down on acid-free paper, and store them in a controlled environment. CDs, hard drives, floppies -- all crap, in the long run.
However, paper currently serves many purposes other than archival. There's no need for the phone company to send me a bill every month, for example. I can take care of it over the phone and/or internet; and I do. And us young folks are looking to eliminate *that* paper.
For archives and books, paper's still the way to go.