Cloud computing is on the rise and I, like most, have trouble imagining a tangible medium like a cloud that can store my information safely. It’s hard to imagine a giant hard drive in the sky that collects billions of people’s information, yet that’s what’s implied with cloud computing.
To think of it differently, cloud computing isn’t really a giant, hard drive living in a puffy cloud, but alludes to consumers creating content, downloading content, uploading content onto another company’s server. We as consumer therefore save more room on our personal hard drives. Also, it provides back-up files in case our home computers crash. Simply, it’s like an external hard drive shared by the world, yet you can only access your content and not anyone else’s.
Next the question of security arises: if this “external hard drive” is shared by everybody, how protected am I really? There are smart people in the world who love to hack things; can they get access to my personal information? After reading “Demystifying Cloud Computing For Consumers,” they make a point that cloud-computing services like Amazon have a clause about security (2011). The article doesn’t answer the question, and I don’t feel like they can. Only the services using cloud computing (Apple, Google, Amazon) can answer security questions. There’s always a risk using personal information on the Internet, it’s a fact. As long as the cloud companies are doing their best to protect their customers, that’s all that consumers can ask for.
The brand that Apple’s trying to create with cloud computing left me feeling like my information was going someplace mysterious as I looked toward the sky. The explanation of iCloud seemed too high tech. Yet, the concept is more grounded than it sounds. The whole vision of the cloud keeps people in suspense, yet Apple’s always been great about that. Apple is known for their “out-of-the-box,” innovative technology. So continuing to call their product iCloud holds true to Apple. The other cloud companies, Amazon and Google, haven’t pushed cloud computing in people’s faces, but have still made their presence with this new technology known. They have a chance to ground people’s association with cloud computing so consumers aren’t frightened to send their information out. In reality, the information isn’t going out into a space with no boundaries, but to a tangible place controlled by Amazon, Apple, and Google.
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