3 ms·

It's an interesting idea but I completely disagree. Example 1: I own four personal computers and operate two virtual machines in the cloud (with two different

It's an interesting idea but I completely disagree. Example 1: I own four personal computers and operate two virtual machines in the cloud (with two different providers). I don't ever see me owning fewer computers. I will always want at least one machine completely under my control with guaranteed resource availability, regardless of connectivity to the internet. Example 2: The place where I work has computers too. Lots and lots of them. For legal and governance reasons we're not to run our infrastructure externally. I actually think that the number of providers of commoditised mass computing and infrastructure is going to increase over time as computers become more powerful. Right now it's tricky to operate at vast computational scale because of the amount of capital investment required, the sheer number of machines required, and the staff required to supervise them. In the future I think we'll approach a point where there are "chips with everything" and buying computer cycles above and beyond what's embedded in your jewellery (or your skull) will be as simple as bidding a certain amount (or buy-it-now!) and firing off a long-running task into the compute-market. I really can't see a situation in which a small number of players will be able to dominate over the long term. Even companies like Facebook who currently have a huge edge due to the network effects of their large memberships will lose market share as commoditised services spring up to replace them.

phlux 16y ago
The leap I am making in my little story is that one would stop to think of your personal machines and your virtual machines as "computers". Taken in the context of IBM's Watson's perspective at the time, he was looking at the computer as an enormous, extremely complex and costly purpose built device, for say, munitions trajectory calculations. How many of those can we sell? Now look at the "computer" as an enormous, extremely complex and costly purpose built device, for say, hosting all the applications made for mobile access. and the analogy holds. Start to think of your personal machine simply as a sensor (it senses and collects data that you produce, and ships that data to the hosted applications in the cloud) The fact that, itself, is a fractal representation of everything that is occurring in the cloud - that it is, indeed, a computer, doesn't matter. It is a sensor. A very powerful, complex one.

phlux 16y ago

The leap I am making in my little story is that one would stop to think of your personal machines and your virtual machines as "computers". Taken in the context of IBM's Watson's perspective at the time, he was looking at the computer as an enormous, extremely complex and costly purpose built device, for say, munitions trajectory calculations. How many of those can we sell? Now look at the "computer" as an enormous, extremely complex and costly purpose built device, for say, hosting all the applications made for mobile access. and the analogy holds. Start to think of your personal machine simply as a sensor (it senses and collects data that you produce, and ships that data to the hosted applications in the cloud) The fact that, itself, is a fractal representation of everything that is occurring in the cloud - that it is, indeed, a computer, doesn't matter. It is a sensor. A very powerful, complex one.