Sunday 28 September 2014

Post 8: Something about Cloud Computing

Around this time last year, I'd rocked up to Uni once to print out an assignment that I'd spent the whole previous night working on only to realize upon arriving at Uni that I'd stupidly forgotten to attach the actual essay to the e-mail that I'd sent to myself. Since then, I've been a big user of Dropbox, a cloud-storage service that prevents future, similar fuck-ups from occurring. These days, I chuck most of my Uni readings, assignments etc into the Dropbox, allowing me to access them from any computer, my tablet, or even my smartphone.

But I do see the drawbacks. The recent string of celebrity photo hacks demonstrates this. This is why I don't upload private files to Dropbox, or anything with private info. I prefer to back that stuff up onto hard drives, because if they're not connected to my computer, they're pretty much inaccessible unless you're with me in person.

Like Andrejevic pretty much implied in his surveillance reading. We all have the potential to be stalkers. So going by that logic, what's to stop the people behind Dropbox going through your files every now and then and taking note at what you got? Social media websites already pass on your information to advertisers to help with data mining and Google logs your searches. Furthermore, the TPPA is meant to introduce more restrictive copyright laws that are meant to curb the circulation of copyrighted material, so I'd imagine websites like Dropbox would be more vigilant in order to comply with those agreement.

But hey, cloud computing's still pretty handy. As long as you're careful and don't put anything you wouldn't mind others noticing, then I don't really see many other problems with it. It's definitely prevented me from forgetting my assignments since I've started using it.

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