I mean, imagine a future where every computer is just a chromebook, phones are no longer phones but just a “terminal” that streams the actual OS which runs in the cloud.
I mean, with 5G, I think its possible to make it seamless. And I think corporations push for this because they would love to have your data in the cloud, both for surveillance, and to charge a subscription for storage. I think this enshittifications would eventually happen to digital storage.
“You would own nothing and you’d be happy”
So how likely will this dystopian future happen?
I’d predict a 90% chance of this happening, and almost everyone would be okay at first, until they start overcharging for cloud storage subscriptions, but by then it’d be too late, there’d be a monopoly.
It’s pretty funny how I’ve seen posts exactly like this one 10-15 years ago, and nothing has really changed that much from a consumer perspective.
It’s just simply cheaper, more reliable, and more convenient to have local storage.
Almost definitely not at all. There’s just too much latency, due to the speed of light. Local storage will always be faster than cloud, by a huge margin, unless you’re using an incredibly slow medium.
Yep, SSD latency is measured in tens of microseconds. To achieve that kind of latency with a cloud service, you’d need it to be just a few kilometers away or the light propagation delay alone becomes too great.
You can take my 100TB storage array from my cold, dead, hands.
Oh don’t worry, they’ll cite “national security concerns” and claim that you are storing stolen classified information in order to plan for “terrorist activity”.
There will be a no knock warrant, they’ll kick open the door, shoot anything that moves. And they will take it away from your cold, dead, hands.
Aren’t there enough real problems in the world to focus on without the need to go inventing more? This is just imaginative rage bait. Focus on real shit that’s actually happening.
If by “seamless” you mean that wireless data speeds can soon match locally attached storage, there will still remain a political question of autonomy. We might some day have light terminals without storage or even serious processors with all the data and work still done in our cellars garages and and attics via 8G or whatever grade connection. If there will be enough demand for market and politics for devices to be available, of course. So yeah, I think, culture and politics hold the answer.
Seamless as in, the internet at such a hypothetical future would be so reliable, that if the software didn’t tell you it was actually cloud storage, you’d believe its actually local storage.
