The Computer Is Your Friend: Chrome Wasn't Built In A Day

[athelind]

Douglas Rushkoff insists that Google Chrome OS will CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Some of Rushkoff's arguments are less than convincing to a Linux user, I'm afraid. I'm not "locked into Microsoft Office". I use Open Office, and when an MS user simply HAS to see my work, I export -- which I'd have to do with GoogleApps anyway.


I'm simply not comfortable working "in the cloud". The privacy issues Rushkoff so cavalierly dismisses as "false" are still there; if I'm working on a confidential report, I don't want it on a drive whose access I can't control. I don't want to be dependent on the reliability of my Internet connection to access it myself, either. If I'm working on the Great American Novel, can I be sure that Google or whoever winds up running their servers will keep my file safe? Will I see it at Borders with someone else's name on the cover? If their system crashes so catastrophically that my work can't be recovered, will they be liable?

And gods forbid The Authorities should ever decide that I'm a Person of Interest. Shoot, I don't even have to assume they'll single me out; it's no great stretch to think that they'll decide that having the ability to pick through everyone's conveniently-accessible personal files is the same as having both the right and the obligation to do so.

It's not like they haven't before.

GoogleApps are convenient collaboration tools, but I don't think they can our should replace local computing.

This doesn't mean I won't try GoogleChrome if I can ever get a functioning NetBook (I'm about to send the second Eee back due to SSD failure). I can see a lot of uses for the paradigm.

I just don't plan to do anything important with it.

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Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Now, see, there's a flip side there -- there IS a market and a use for the thin client/thin hardware machine. That's why netbooks are so successful right now, and ChromeOS may just kick some serious ass on the Netbook platform.

What Ruskoff doesn't get -- and a lot of the industry doesn't get, though the MARKET does -- is that the Netbook is a fundamentally different animal than the desktop. For the last couple of decades, everyone's been talking about "convergence" -- but "convergence" isn't the FUTURE anymore. It's HAPPENED.

What's happening NOW is divergence. Netbooks are splitting off from desktops, and becoming Something Else. An operating system optimized for the Cheap Fast Lightweight Net-Machine is a great idea, and may finally slap the rest of the industry around to realize that Netbooks AREN'T just "desktop lite".

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

I dunno, myself. I'm pretty gadget shy, though, if it isn't a kitchen gadget. People keep telling me how convenient their iPhone is and I keep saying, "I find having no cell phone at all is even MORE convenient. I never have to worry about being out and then someone calling me and doing that awkward thing where you tell the people around you you've 'got to take this' and then having everyone looking at you shaking their heads for ten minutes." I kind of feel the same way about netbooks. If I wasn't somewhere that I could sit down in a comfy chair with a good keyboard I couldn't imagine wanting to work real hard on a project. So . . . I DO find myself wondering at the whole logic behind netbooks . . .

Which means that maybe I should shut up, huh? :) But I mostly see this as a brawl between two giant corporations that's about something that doesn't really effect me or, really, anyone I know in a serious way.