I mean, imagine a future where every computer is just a chromebook, phones are no longer phones but just a “terminal” that streams the actual OS which runs in the cloud.
I mean, with 5G, I think its possible to make it seamless. And I think corporations push for this because they would love to have your data in the cloud, both for surveillance, and to charge a subscription for storage. I think this enshittifications would eventually happen to digital storage.
“You would own nothing and you’d be happy”
So how likely will this dystopian future happen?
I’d predict a 90% chance of this happening, and almost everyone would be okay at first, until they start overcharging for cloud storage subscriptions, but by then it’d be too late, there’d be a monopoly.
If by “seamless” you mean that wireless data speeds can soon match locally attached storage, there will still remain a political question of autonomy. We might some day have light terminals without storage or even serious processors with all the data and work still done in our cellars garages and and attics via 8G or whatever grade connection. If there will be enough demand for market and politics for devices to be available, of course. So yeah, I think, culture and politics hold the answer.
“You would own nothing and you’d be happy”
I’m fed up with that bullshit phrase. Please, stop parroting it. And, even if it became true… You’ll be happy, which is more than 90% of humanity could hope for.
In some ways, it already has.
Lots of orgs that used to have file servers and data centres have been moving to things like OneDrive.
On-board storage space used to be a selling point for laptops, phones, and pre-built computers…but now some of them are coming bundled with a few months’ subscription to cloud storage. It’s been easy to find desktops with 0.5 or 1TB of storage space for years, yet the price of HDDs has been decreasing for years.
Plenty of people seem to use things like Google Drive as a way to move files or even to “save space on their devices” the way that we used to use thumbdrives or external drives (and yes, those are still viable methods of moving and backing up files, but it used to be the only way).
I think if your computer has only 0.5TB of storage, then the machine might as well be primarily a cloud storage-backed device. (Unless you’ve got your files elsewhere, etcetcetc). We’ll always need local storage for things like the OS and for more easily running whatever apps or files that were just downloaded off the cloud…so I don’t think it’ll ever go to 0. But 0.5TB is pretty darn close these days! Lol
And if you think that you’re not guilty of using cloud storage…tell me what percentage of your Steam library you have downloaded locally… Lol
(Steam isn’t cloud storage, but the principle is similar – “I don’t need to store my files because they’re available for me to download at any time from someone else’s computer!”)
