Heads in the cloud and forgotten privacy

Heads in the cloud and forgotten privacy.

A colleague and good friend recently said to me “we’ve come a long way since web 1.0".

Yes we have, and it’s been a journey of gains and losses.

Here we are within web 2.0 and V3 knocking at the door and chomping at the bit to get going in the race for dominance and a piece (if not all) of our data. Quantum Computing? Yeah that’s gonna be the game changer, and it’ll happen in my lifetime for sure.

It has been a strange and curious journey hasn’t it? We’ve arrived (currently) at a point in time where generational many younger folk just don’t understand us older users of traditional UX/UI and our bemoaning of ownership rather than subscriptions. Yeah the younger generation are (or have been) so conditioned into actually believing that everything is a subscription and data protection and privacy is a thing of the past.

I use a lot of legacy software products; yeah we call them apps now. The kind of products that you actually downloaded and stored (archived) the installer exe. Oh I know; that is just so last century now eh. I actually used a 10 year old version of MS Office up until a few months ago before jumping all over Corel WordPerfect Office suite, Only because the interface was rather old school and the exe was and is reusable. It actually kicks Micky soft’s **s.

Haven’t you noticed or realized; what we used to do for free maybe even as lately as 5 years ago, we now subscribe to? For this getting older guy involved in some pretty damn interesting projects; it’s a challenge (read curse).

And then there’s the hardware. It’s changing at an exponential rate. Jeez; hard-drives are even becoming old school.

The cloud though is a real challenge for me. Yes I use it extensively, yet I must continually remind myself that There is no cloud (a crafty name), it’s merely someone else’s computer (server). Yes we tend to forget this don’t we; and we’ve certainly been conditioned into believing this arrangement is okay and actually a convenient arrangement.

I recoil in pseudo shock when friends and colleagues shriek “F**k I’ve been hacked......Again”. I basically give them a show of emotional support and kinda psychologically coach them into a nice place where they can recoup their mindset and reform their use of and understanding of the beautiful cloud that has metaphorically F****d us over since it’s inception.

Yes I’m cynical when it comes to willingly offering up data to the cloud that is unashamedly data-mined by developers who get us to download, use and abuse (by subliminal means) and add our private and sensitive data to what has been termed Free for Personal use products.

I mean, what part of F*****g stupid doesn’t that scream at you? Some products are so enticing that we jump all over them like a dog on heat and make some kind of pseudo psychological love moves on them.
The numbers following some of these actually awesome products are impressive. I recently was enticed by a product that took me a little over two months (yup) to eventually set up that suited my ways of creating, managing and exchanging (sharing) information and knowledge.

Then I had to stop myself and ask the question I have been advocating all along and never even thought of following my own advice. Yes I forgot (WTF) to ask the developer all about their data protection and security arrangements. I did ask them.......and got silence.

So my head was in the clouds (and also up my own **s), because of my stupid lack of process. I was seduced by an awesome (it’s still awesome) product that could have (and maybe still have) the potential to change my knowledge management practices. I believe the product can still add to my knowledge work, yet that data security and privacy thing has stopped me in my tracks.

Caution and discernment for sure when we choose to add software (apps) and cloud (someone else’s computer) arrangements for our data. BTW: That awesome product/service I use? I connected with the developer who gave me this answer “If you’re not happy using our product; don’t use it, we’re not forcing you to use it are we?”.

Generational?

Enough said eh; end of.