Thursday, December 9, 2010
Muddiest Point
I personally believe that the YouTube video titled “Explaining Cloud Computing” was probably the weakest piece of material. As I often tend to claim, I am not saying it was bad or useless, but merely the weakest in comparison to the others. I do appreciate the fact that it is capable of giving the user a general idea as of how the technology really works. However, I did feel as though that Galen Gruman had already accomplished this goal through his article, with the addition of some other pieces of information to further explain its importance. Putting those circumstances into consideration, perhaps we could have sufficed without the YouTube video. Then again, I already knew about how cloud computing works, which was due in part to my experience taking “LIS 2000: Understanding Information” in my first semester at this master’s program. I probably might as well been taking a brief glance at both of them and easily claim that I could suffice without either of the sources made available.
Week 14: Organizational Computing, Cloud Computing, and the Future
Although electronic records and digitization have enabled the means to store so much information in such little space, we are faced with harsh reality once again as we realize that they too have their limitations. As a result of the Internet and all the technological innovations that came along with it, the issue of storage has been resolved (probably just for now). This breakthrough would be known as “cloud computing.” Because the hard-drives individuals and/or organizations have in their possession is not enough to digitally store the materials they want to maintain, especially when it comes to keeping extra copies handy, cloud computing can serve as a secondary source to store information. Through access to the Internet, these digital sources can easily be transferred into those distant locations for safe-keeping, while users are able to save more room in their own hard-drives for more digital sources of information. This sort of phenomenon would come especially useful for libraries. The libraries have learned to bring the latest technological breakthroughs to their advantage by incorporating them into their services, which so happened to include access to digital copies of the digitized books they are able to maintain. It would seem logical to include cloud computing so that the staff has a secondary source handy to maintain the digital copies of the digitized books and/or the digital records/files. Either way, the utilization of cloud computing should allow libraries to make more room for their own hard-drives, or to ensure the availability of a back-up in case of an emergency.
I am reminded of a chapter from Albert-László Barabási’s book “Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life” once again. When Al-Qaeda executed the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the terrorists responsible for launching the attacks on the Twin Towers anticipated that some kind of a domino effect was to occur, i.e. once a symbol of the Western World’s economic power would be destroyed, everything else would be collapse with it; thus weakening their status in every possible sense. What the criminals did not anticipate was that the World Trade Center utilized a decentralized system to conduct their affairs, which enabled the others to easily take over where the one that had shut down left off. Cloud computing can in itself abide by a similar example, so long as organizations have a secondary source handy to store extra copies of their digital/digitized files. Whatever may happen to the organization, the cloud computing solution that had been utilized can come to the rescue with the back-ups. What happened on that horrific day is a testimony that a decentralized system can allow sources of information to withstand any catastrophe. However, the scenario only applies to digital/digitized materials/copies. Because the format calls upon a greater need for the preservation of the physical copies, for the sake of further ensuring the survival of the information, it should be mandatory to print out the files to compliment the services that cloud computing provides.
I am reminded of a chapter from Albert-László Barabási’s book “Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life” once again. When Al-Qaeda executed the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the terrorists responsible for launching the attacks on the Twin Towers anticipated that some kind of a domino effect was to occur, i.e. once a symbol of the Western World’s economic power would be destroyed, everything else would be collapse with it; thus weakening their status in every possible sense. What the criminals did not anticipate was that the World Trade Center utilized a decentralized system to conduct their affairs, which enabled the others to easily take over where the one that had shut down left off. Cloud computing can in itself abide by a similar example, so long as organizations have a secondary source handy to store extra copies of their digital/digitized files. Whatever may happen to the organization, the cloud computing solution that had been utilized can come to the rescue with the back-ups. What happened on that horrific day is a testimony that a decentralized system can allow sources of information to withstand any catastrophe. However, the scenario only applies to digital/digitized materials/copies. Because the format calls upon a greater need for the preservation of the physical copies, for the sake of further ensuring the survival of the information, it should be mandatory to print out the files to compliment the services that cloud computing provides.
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