Is computing at inflection point similar to weapons technology and cars?
Summary: At an inflection point, need for efficiency will overtake need for power. In the past, industries eg. weapons and auto have reached such an inflection point. Computing is approaching such an inflection point. Once we hit such an inflection point, light devices such net books, cell phones and light devices will be more popular than heavy weight desktops. Increase in user data, popularity of light devices and increase in bandwidth will lead to a central data repository. Current trend is to go to cloud services to host such a repository. Tonido and Tonidplug offer better alternative than cloud.
When arms race began in early part of 20th century, countries where building weapons that could pack as many TNT as possible in a missile/bomb. All through the world war, only thing that mattered was “how much TNT of power can be packed per cubic inch or per gram”. However, after years of building weapons, countries had nuclear bombs and other weapons that can pack tons of TNT. Power wasn’t constraint anymore.
Post world war-II, weapon builders shifted their focus from power to precision. What mattered now was precision, how accurate a weapon can hit a target and how precise can be the damage. Another such example is car industry. Automakers were on an arms race to build higher HP cars. Focus was on “how much horse power you can pack in a car”. However, when energy crisis began, focus shifted to efficiency. Everyone knows that the supply of oil is not unlimited, hence future of cars will be on efficiency not horsepower.
In computing, as defined by Moore’s law, power of the processor increased and size decreased, our appetite for bigger and more powerful machine grew. We use 64 bit processors in desktops. Question is will arms race to pack more power will continue or will it turn towards efficient and low maintenance devices?
Already enterprise servers are moving towards efficiency as cooling and energy costs become big part of data center costs. Soon, efficiency will be the key in running desktop and personal devices since users want their system run for long time for streaming media, or downloading TV programming, torrents, files, videos and music.
Constraint in with these light weight devices will be size and weight. By design, these devices should have limited (<100GB?) storage if not, these devices aren’t designed optimally taking advantage of bandwidth. With the current rate of growth in user data and growth in bandwidth, central remote data repositories are viable.
Such remote repositories can be hosted by cloud service vendors (Dropbox, Google etc) or you can use personal devices (TonidoPlug, PogoPlug) to host and maintain your repository. At CodeLathe, we believe your remote repository should be in a personal device which guarantees absolute privacy and prevents from any vendor lock-ins.
CodeLathe’s TonidoPlug is a small energy efficient device that would help you host files, data and applications at fraction of the cost that you have to pay for cloud services. Free cloud service today doesn’t always mean free forever, soon cloud companies will have to charge fee to be sustainable.
TonidoPlug can offer more than just remote drive or repository. You can access music, video/photos and manage calendars, contacts, Tonido applications. TonidoPlug will relieve you from running you power consuming desktop from running 24×7 to download torrents or running your home server to stream music or video in your home.
TonidoPlug will save you money in initial cost as well as in operating costs. Learn more at www.tonidoplug.com.
There were even wilder reactions. The post + comments disappeared from public view in Hacker News. Did someone think we were trolling?
Why exactly is that?
Does Free mean you cannot complain anymore?
In today’s computing world, most online services/apps are free. Put simply, users get what they want, while companies monetize the popularity. Simple relationship.
But now, there appears to be a tribe of people bearing arms, bludgeoning anyone who dares to speak out about lousy service quality, bad uptime, bad customer support etc all under the blanket “Its free, what you got to complain about”.
What happens if Google stops showing search results for companies and products they don’t like. It is a free service, no one can complain, but you bet that those companies are going to die pretty soon.
Or what happens if Gmail loses all your incoming emails and you learn about it a couple of months later. No big deal if you are Grandma. Pretty big deal if you run a small business using Google Domains. (Which is free btw)
Or what happens if Google Docs swallows many of your documents ?
Maybe you will say, “Its a free service. Stop complaining”
or maybe not.
If the knee-jerk reaction to criticism and complaints is to shush them under blanket nonsensical rhetoric, then it is not much different from strong arming tactics like this.
The only recourse a ordinary customer is to complain loud and clear..
When enough people complain, companies do sit up and listen. Without those checks and balances, things break down. Products and companies never improve, because they never get complaints..Everything is rosy.
With Tonido, we are not only spouting philosophy but trying to implement it. Some of the best insightful feedback we have got about Tonido has come from people who told us why Tonido sucks.
So Tonido users make some noise. We are listening.