The World Wide Computer, Monopolies and Control

Ian Lamont writes "Nick Carr has generated a lot of discussion following his recent comments about the IT department fading away, but there are several other points he is trying to make about the rise of utility computing. He believes that the Web has evolved into a massive, programmable computer (the "World Wide Computer") that essentially lets any person or organization customize it to meet their needs. This relates to another trend he sees — a shift toward centralization. Carr draws interesting parallels to the rise of electricity suppliers during the Industrial Revolution. He says in a book excerpt printed on his blog that while decentralized technologies — the PC, Internet, etc. — can empower individuals, institutions have proven to be quite skilled at reestablishing control. 'Even though the Internet still has no center, technically speaking, control can now be wielded, through software code, from anywhere. What's different, in comparison to the physical world, is that acts of control become harder to detect and those wielding control more difficult to discern.'"

Comments

To paraphrase Charlie Stross

[monopole]

The definition of a real utility computing environment is one where somebody can hold a coup d'etat in it and make it stick in the real world.

Re:big server farms, thin clients at home

[MightyMartian]

There may be little you can't do, but there's a lot you can't do well, reliably or securely. As cool as Google Apps may be, you're essentially trusting your data integrity and security to an outside company.

The web, as it currently exists, is a really shitty software platform. Web 2.0, if it meaningfully exists at all, is built on some rather horrible hacks that break down the server-client wall, and for certain kinds of limited applications that's fine, but building substantial applications, like accounting and financial software, in AJAX would be an unbelievably difficult job, and a rather hard one to justify.

I think this guy is, as with his last great proclamation, overstating his case. Yes, in certain arenas, like home and small business email, apps like GMail certainly can play a role, but I can tell you right now that the business I am in, which deals with confidential information, will be waiting a long time before farming out this sort of thing.

The mainframe is back

[Duncan3]

So we're back to the point in the cycle where centralized mainframes you rent time on rule the world again. Can you guess what happens next? Privacy problems, reliability problems, outages, and we all go back to personal systems again.

Old is new again.