Record Detail Back
Cloud Security and Privacy
- Share to:
To understand what cloud computing is and is not, it is important to understand how this model of computing has evolved. As Alvin Toffler notes in his famous book, The Third Wave (Bantam, 1980), civilization has progressed in waves (three of them to date: the first wave was agricultural societies, the second was the industrial age, and the third is the information age). Within each wave, there have been several important subwaves. In this post-industrial information age, we are now at the beginning of what many people feel will be an era of cloud computing.
In his book The Big Switch (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), Nicholas Carr discusses an information revolution very similar to an important change within the industrial era. Specifically, Carr equates the rise of cloud computing in the information age to electrification in the industrial age. It used to be that organizations had to provide their own power (water wheels, windmills). With electrification, however, organizations no longer provide their own power; they just plug in to the electrical grid. Carr argues that cloud computing is really the beginning of the same change for information technology. Now organizations provide their own computing resources (power). The emerging future, however, is one in which organizations will simply plug in to the cloud (computing grid) for the computing resources they need. As he puts it, “In the end the savings offered by utilities become too compelling to resist, even for the largest enterprises. The grid wins.” In fact, Part 2 of his book is about “living in the cloud” and the benefits it provides. (Carr also discusses at length some of the perceived negative consequences to society of this big switch, specifically some of the darker aspects this change brings to society.)
Tim Mather, Subra Kumaraswamy, and Shahed Latif - Personal Name
978-0-596-80276-9
NONE
Information Technology
English
2009
1-336
LOADING LIST...
LOADING LIST...