The point of the computing cloud for me has been the continued abstraction of data and services from the computing platform. I've been using computers since early 1980s (In 1982, I wrote my dissertation on the University of Miami's UNIVAC 1100), and I became a Mac user in 1987, so I am well-versed in the problems with exchanging data on one platform with users on another platform. I'm glad those wars are mostly over. I now use a PC at work, a MacBook Pro at home, an Asus Chromebook on the road, and an iPhone everywhere. The underlying hardware and operating systems are almost transparent windows to my online data, documents, and communications. I'm writing this post at home on my MacBook, but I've written posts on all my devices, including my iPhone. I also no longer ask my students what kind of device they have when I make an assignment as they all have at least a smartphone (again, I don't care which) that will let them access the class wiki and do the work. However, they do need a Google account to do most of the work.
And here is the one more platform layer that I want to remove: Google (or Facebook or Twitter). Some of the technologies that Tony Hirst and Stephen Downes discussed in their video chat (over Google, of course) seem to be taking the first steps toward separating a cloud service (say, video chat) from a monolithic platform such as Google. This continues a long progression in computing: we were freed from particular hardware, then from particular operating systems, and maybe soon from particular cloud platforms. So someday I may be able to fire up a container (made by Tony Hirst and released into the commons) on any of my half-dozen devices and hold a video chat with others peer-to-peer on their different devices and containers. I may even write my own containers for special services and release those containers into the commons where they can be used or remixed into different containers to render different services.
Maybe.
My understanding of complex systems is all about the movement of energy, matter, information, and organization within and among systems. As a complex system myself, I self-organize and endure only to the degree that I can sustain the flows of energy (think food) and information (think EL 3.0) through me. The cloud is primarily about flows of information, and the assumption I hear in Stephen's discussion is that I, an individual, should be able to control that flow of information rather than some other person or group (say, Facebook) and that I should be able to control the flow of information both into and out of me. I find this idea of self-control, or self-organization, problematic—mostly because it is not absolute. As far as I know, only black holes absolutely command their own spaces, taking in whatever energy and information they like and giving out nothing (well, almost nothing—seems that even black holes may not be absolute).
It helps me to walk outside for discussions such as this, so come with me into my backyard for a moment. The day is cool and sunny, so I'm soaking in lots of energy from sunlight. I've had a great breakfast, so more energy. I've read all the posts about the cloud in the #el30 feed, so I have lots of information. Of course, I'm pulling in petabytes of data from my backyard, though I'm conscious of only a small bit. Even with the bright light, I can see only a sliver of the available bandwidth. I hear only a little of what is here, and I certainly don't hear the cosmic background radiation, the echo of the big bang that is still resonating throughout the universe. I'm awash in energy and information. I always have been. Furthermore, I can absorb and process only a bit (pun intended) of the data and energy streams flowing around me, and very little of this absorption is my choice. Yes, if the Sun is too bright, I can go back inside, put on more clothing, or put on sunscreen, but really, what have I to do about the flow of energy from the Sun? And what have I to do with the house to go into, the clothing to put on, or the sunscreen. All of those things are complex systems that came to me through other complex systems (bank loans, retail stores, manufacturing factories, Amazon, and my own income streams). Most of the energy and information streams that I tap into owe little to me, not even the energy and information that I feedback.
In his post "Post-it found! the low-tech side of eLearning 3.0 ;-)", AK quotes George Siemens as saying something like "what information abundance consumes is attention", and this gets me, I hope, to a point about all this: Siemens is talking about only a tiny subset of information available to me, even though it tends to be the information that consumes most of my attention. There are other far more important streams of energy and information that I should attend to, I think.
Ahh ... maybe this is my point: even if I can avail myself of more access to more information, I'm already drowning in data. What I desperately need are better filters for selecting among the data and better models for organizing that selected data into useful, actionable knowledge. This is what my students need. Everyone in the U.S. needs better filters and models, especially with national elections on the horizon. In this sense, we are not so different from all the humans and other living creatures who have existed, except that our social systems are so much more complex and complicated than those that came before. What data do I trust, and after I've determined that, how do I arrange this data into actionable knowledge? Facebook and Google are filtering data for me now, and they are even arranging that data into actionable knowledge, but I don't think I trust them. Can the cloud help me interpret the cloud?
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