Some observations in the wake of the T-Mobile Sidekick debacle, which includes server failure, a $100 customer appreciation card, and discussions of the dark side of cloud computing:
The cloud is a mysterious black box. The cloud is a representation of primarily corporate sponsored, for-profit activities hosted on the larger Internet, with no duty other than to shareholders of the various corporations. One uses the cloud at one's own risk. T-Mobile and Microsoft have given alarmists a clear and convincing example of exactly what those risks are.
Cloud computing is defined at Wikipedia as:
"Cloud computing is the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers."(emphasis added)
Cloud computing is not new. If you have a hotmail account, you use the cloud. What is new is the extent to which things beside webmail are being offered via the cloud, including, in the case of T-Mobile's Sidekick service, "personal information stored on [a] device--such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos."
Large corporations like T-Mobile and Google encourage users to rely on their services for storage of and access to this kind of personal information, and it seems that the number of people who truly rely on these services is ever on the rise. But only a very few of those users are aware of the dangers associated with such reliance, not the least of which being that the terms of service may include language such as this from T-Mobile:
21. * Disclaimer of Warranties. EXCEPT FOR ANY WRITTEN WARRANTY THAT MAY BE PROVIDED WITH A DEVICE YOU PURCHASE FROM US, AND TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICES AND DEVICES ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “WITH ALL FAULTS” BASIS AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE CONCERNING YOUR SERVICE OR YOUR DEVICE. WE CAN'T PROMISE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE SERVICE AND DON'T AUTHORIZE ANYONE TO MAKE ANY WARRANTIES ON OUR BEHALF. THIS DOESN'T DEPRIVE YOU OF ANY WARRANTY RIGHTS YOU MAY HAVE AGAINST ANYONE ELSE. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT YOUR COMMUNICATIONS WILL BE PRIVATE OR SECURE; IT IS ILLEGAL FOR UNAUTHORIZED PEOPLE TO INTERCEPT YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, BUT SUCH INTERCEPTIONS CAN OCCUR.
That paragraph ostensibly applies to services T-Mobile provides via the cloud:
Please read these T&Cs carefully. They cover important information about all T-Mobile services provided to you (“Service”) and your T-Mobile phone, handset, device, SIM card, data card, or other equipment (“Device”).
What engineers might have called a black box has been tarted up with the fluffier label, the cloud.
Black box is a technical term for a device, system or object when it is viewed in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge required of its internal workings. Almost anything might occasionally be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, humans, the Internet.
The opposite of a black box is a system in which the inner components or logic are available for inspection (such as a free software/open source program), which is sometimes known as a white box, a glass box, or a clear box.
The cloud is a black-box into which one throws one's personal data with no knowledge of the internal workings. If that black box is provided by a responsible purveyor of services then use of that black box for mission critical information may make sense. If, however, that black box is provided by entities that expressly disclaim any responsibility to the user, one might do better to put into it nothing of importance (and certainly nothing unique).
Calling this particular black box the cloud subtly shifts users away from commonsense concerns over reliance on black-box technology. In the case of the T-Mobile Sidekick failure, users paid the price for accepting that shift and failing to recognize the dangers of the black box that so eagerly swallowed their personal information.