5th
“The Cloud” renders hard drives & PC’s obsolete
“Today, it’s hard to imagine computer owners in the United States and other developed countries abandoning their PCs for thin clients. Many of us, after all, have dozens or even hundreds of gigabytes of data on our personal hard drives, including hefty music and video files. But once utility services mature, the idea of getting rid of your PC will become much more attractive. At that point, each of us will have access to virtually unlimited online storage as well as a rich array of software services. We’ll also be tapping into the Net through many different devices, from mobile phones to televisions, and we’ll want to have all of them share our data and applications. Having our files and sofware locked into our PC’s hard drives will be an unnecessary nuisance. Companies like Google and Yahoo will likely be eager to supply us with all-purpose utility services, possibly including thin-client devices, for free–in return for the privilege of showing us advertisements. We may find, twenty or so years from now, that the personal computer has become a museum piece, a reminder of a curious time when all of us are forced to be amateur computer technicians.”
Nicholas Carr in his book “The Big Switch” discussing how PC’s, software, hard drives and all that junk will be replaced by a simple monitor connected to the internet. The cloud will take care of the rest.
