I will openly admit that I am anything but a technological expert. I am, however, a science fiction buff and undyingly optimistic about the ability of technology to shape human life for the better. Perhaps the combination of these factors leads me to believe that simply accepting cloud computing as a more efficient way to go about one’s daily tasks is not only overly simplistic, but frightening because of the potential loss in freedom-respecting innovation.

The arguments for and against centralized data services such as gmail, Facebook and cloud computing in general, seem perfectly logical on their face. Luis Villa argues that such services are growing in popularity and will probably remain with us indefinitely because they eliminate the daily hassle of maintaining one’s own server, troubleshooting it when it goes down, adding storage space, updating spam blocking and security software, and installing interfaces for mobile devices. It is true that most people are not technologically adept enough to run their own servers and even the ones that are, find it much easier not to. Villa and myriad other cloud computing supporters admit that there is a tradeoff between privacy and security and the headache such services can make go away.

The replies to this argument have been explored in class to some extent. The first of which is that the problems caused by central data aggregation are really not “once in a lifetime” events. The sale and exchange of data on a scale that is difficult to imagine to most people happens every day with the attendant conglomeration of different types of data from different sources linked to a particular individual. How that information is used is unclear and one can no longer really be sure why he or she was turned down for a job or a loan or a particular insurance. Those are problems more and more people will face many times over the course of their lives. So, the tradeoff suffers from an inherent undervaluation of the level of privacy being foregone. Second, that tradeoff may be far less appealing when other services emerge and a user finds herself unable to migrate data from the old service to the new or if a particular service changes its terms. Facebook’s claims of ownership to pictures uploaded to its site are one such prominent example. A service may also change its business model entirely – say relying on subscriptions instead of advertising revenue after user “lock-in” has occurred.

Some of these problems can be allayed by conscientious developers who create services that allow users to easily transfer data from one service to another or to move it into a standardized format. The Franklin Street Statement is one step in this direction. With the right movement, principles, and licenses perhaps one day this may be achieved. But, this won’t address problems related to changes in terms of service and in particular, without a new jurisprudence, nothing can be done with regard to the level of legal protection afforded to the data the service provider maintains. While encryption of data can be a practical solution, for some purposes that protection may impede the functionality of the service.

My greatest worry is that in accepting this tradeoff, even if it is conceded that it’s an appropriate one to make right now (which I am not necessarily conceding), we as a society accept the technological status quo, and stop innovating in a direction that will respect an individual’s freedom and autonomy. For example, we spoke briefly of wall-warts in class. This is an intriguing technology with a great potential to eliminate many of the problems with self-hosting and to move centralized computing tasks into decentralized peer-to-peer networks. But, without truly easy software to run it and some functionality that would provide the user with more than he or she would otherwise be able to have from centrally hosted web software, very few people will use it. Unfortunately, enhanced privacy alone is not enough to motivate most people to spend money or time on anything. Recognizing the technology’s supremacy in respecting user freedom is not sufficient to draw developers to the project either if one believes that cloud computing, particularly the version seen today, is good enough. Treating the tradeoff as an inevitable decision is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

-- KateVershov - 28 May 2009