Information banking
Feb. 9th, 2007 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dickensListening to MPR this afternoon I heard
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7320258 "Your life preserved in a chip in your heel."
He talks about how much one can lose if you lose a laptop (heck, if a government agency loses a laptop) the "modern Achilles' heel".
It reminded me of a bit of economics/history. People used to carry around all they owned. Rulers traveled with huge retinues of guards and all their treasure because they could not trust it to be secure if it was not with them. A single well-planned attack could cripple you financially. Later they built fortresses to secure treasure, but then how do you spend it?
The advent of banking, depositing money securely and drawing it out at will, changed civilizations greatly because it allowed you to stop worrying about all your stuff.
So back to laptops. The analogy isn't perfect, data can be backed up, encrypted, or otherwise protected... But a lot of people still 'carry their treasure with them'.
What would an information bank look like? An info ATM?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7320258 "Your life preserved in a chip in your heel."
He talks about how much one can lose if you lose a laptop (heck, if a government agency loses a laptop) the "modern Achilles' heel".
It reminded me of a bit of economics/history. People used to carry around all they owned. Rulers traveled with huge retinues of guards and all their treasure because they could not trust it to be secure if it was not with them. A single well-planned attack could cripple you financially. Later they built fortresses to secure treasure, but then how do you spend it?
The advent of banking, depositing money securely and drawing it out at will, changed civilizations greatly because it allowed you to stop worrying about all your stuff.
So back to laptops. The analogy isn't perfect, data can be backed up, encrypted, or otherwise protected... But a lot of people still 'carry their treasure with them'.
What would an information bank look like? An info ATM?
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 12:02 am (UTC)I think it's because of the lack of a transparent, high-performance, and ubiquitous infrastructure for accessing those services.
Storing all your email on an IMAP server or webmail account works great--- until you step on a plane. Running queries across an SQL database in the data center is painless from the home office but not from Pnom Phen. And so on. Until network resources are transparently accessible, people will continue to create ad hoc local caches (or maybe have smart software do it for them)---- and we end up with data sitting where it shouldn't.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 05:20 am (UTC)Despite all the very thoughtful things you said, it's late enough that my only mental image is of a small rodent preparing for winter.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 05:32 am (UTC)Or like a balloon... and something bad happens!