Sunday, January 19, 2014

Cloud Computing and Corporate Privacy

The Cloud computing companies would like us to believe that information technology and computing power are ordinary utilities like electricity and water, and corporations should outsource the business of IT infrastructure management to a third party somewhere in the 'Cloud', being managed by them for a monthly fee.


However, unlike electricity and water, computers contain the business process logic and business algorithms developed over decades, giving unique advantages to a corporation.

It is questionable if passing all this information in the hands of another organization managing the 'Cloud' would be safe and beneficial in the long run.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Is Information the opium of the masses in 21st century ?

We are getting addicted to information almost non stop 24 by 7, and a large amount of this information is irrelevant to our lives.

Besides unending personal and business emails and latest news from online and TV, we are getting information from social networking sites: 'Which peanut butter sandwich did Michael eat',  'What clothes Kardashian is wearing', 'Hillary and her new haircut', 'What is the latest news in far east', 'Which sports star said what'. Many people also like to play video games almost all the times.

Some people are so addicted to screens that they are even texting and browsing while driving.

New and exciting information, though irrelevant, gives our brains a high, just like other addictions did. We feel we are in control and empowered, though it hardly changes any thing in our lives.

I tried 'Information de-addiction' for a few days by restricting information to only a short window during the whole day, and it was like I was back in 1970s. I definitely felt that I had a different set and level of hormones and the music in my car felt way better and interesting than other days.