The other night my father-in-law announced he’d ordered a new laptop computer.  Only after 3 years, his broke.  What followed was a conversation I suspect may sound familiar to you: 

“You know Michel, in the future you won’t need to buy a new computer—just a new screen.  The Cloud will be your computer.” 

“Pfff!  I hope not!  I would never trust my data to the Cloud.”

“Um, Michel, you trust your money to a bank, right?”

“Yes, but that’s because I have to.”

“You’re already using the Cloud for some things, whether you’re aware or not.”

“Perhaps, but I have several external hard drives and I use them to back up my data every few weeks.”

“Michel, is your data so much more precious than your money that you’d prefer to keep it ‘under your mattress?’”

Perhaps I’m surrounded by too much Cloud talk at work.  I figured the General Public would be fairly accepting of the direction the Cloud is taking.  But my father-in-law is an engineer and ex technical director of a pretty technical company, so I wasn’t expecting his reaction. 

Do we care? 

I find it curious that public acceptance does not correlate with the rate of progress for things Cloud-related, i.e. Saleforce’s database.com announcement, legislative advancements around country-specific owned/controlled Clouds, etc.

If Human 1.0 theories hold true, I’d suspect this is because the hunters and gathers in us like to feel that we tangibly own and control stuff.  But have no fear; I’m sure we’ll find a creative way to feel psychologically and emotionally good about our data dominion.  And if we can’t?  Well then we’ll displace our control needs to another domain. 

What’s your take?  And what do your in-laws think about this Cloud business?  

Happy New Year to you! 

Best,

Kate