Values Shifts and Trusting the Cloud

Recent rumors about the potential demise of delicious, the popular bookmarking site, reminded me of an old blog post called Trusting the Cloud. But I couldn’t find it….because the blog I had posted it on had previously met its demise, and no backup copy seemed to exist. The essence of the previous “Trusting the Cloud” post, and current dilemma in these “demises” is a violation of trust. Trust is at the core of the emerging postmodern consumer values shift that is re-making the buyer/seller relationship. Can I trust that if I don’t physically possess a good that it will be there for me? Hmmm. Andy Hines

Original Trusting the Cloud Post
Much has been said much about the trend toward cloud computing, where data is stored in the network instead of one’s own computer. An obvious benefit is not having to store large volumes of data on one’s own computer. Another is that storing and accessing data in the cloud can reduce the cost of the data. But, storing own’s data in the cloud requires trust that access to that data will be both secure, reliable, and long-lived.
The dilemma has come home to me in a very personal way as I contemplate my strategy for accessing digital music. I confess that I’ve never quite gotten over a stupid decision many years ago to basically give away a large collection of albums (remember those) because I was sick of lugging them around each time I moved (I was moving a lot back then). I’ve barely made a dent in replacing them, nonetheless, I’ve built up a reasonable collection of digital music, currently stored on a hard drive. There are now many digital music services that offer access to digital music on a streaming basis via subscription. This is certainly a more cost-effective option than buying and owning the music. But it requires maintaining a subscription, basically for life, if you want to continue acccess, and it requires a certain degree of faith that the service will remain a viable operation. And that the service will be reliable. Anyone who has tried to access their bookmarks in the cloud and found that the service no longer existed, and their bookmarks were gone, can identify with this need for reliability.
So here I sit, a professional futurist, recognizing that the cloud is the wave of the future, recognizing the favorable economics of the cloud, but having a difficult time with “trust.” It’s a great example of how this squishy concept of trust that we hear about as the lubricant of the knowledge economy, is perhaps not so squishy after all. If cloud-based services cannot inspire trust, I suspect that many of us will remain old-fashioned owners and possessors.