9
theory on demand
From the File to the Cloud: ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’ (Il Gattopardo – The Leopard) Today, web applications are able to replace almost all software that has ever been created for the computer. The very idea of a personal computer has ceased existing now everyone is able to have his or her own personal web space. Ten years ago users were still struggling to understand how to manage file systems; today, users are completely unaware of how they are under the thumb of the dispersion of their contents online. Hardware devices now almost exclusively serve to provide access to the Web and its services. As users we do not ‘own’ anything, because everything is shared with the large corporations that provide us with services free of charge. For the common user, the computer as a physical entity has faded in the impalpability of cloud computing. Like Olympic Gods, the informatics of domination which rule our lives stay in the clouds. This ‘evolution’ reflects a precise technical and economic goal, namely, that the Web has to become the main environment for IT development. Key elements of this evolution are cloud computing, the smartphone, tablet, e-reader (or mobile devices in general), browsers, HTML5, and social networks. One of the most interesting innovations associated with mobile devices and the Web in general is the disappearance of the concept of files and file systems. On desktop systems we have gotten used to working with folder and files; our documents are files, images are files, and all of these files are organized in folders. Often the links between different types of files and applications are very clear: a word processor creates, displays or edits textual files while an image viewer handles image files. However, for mobile devices with access to content on the Web this organization in files and folders is close to meaningless. Instead of speaking of files and folder these devices speak of services or features. This development is undoubtedly interesting and not devoid of a dark side. The example of what happened to music files is perhaps most evocative. In a desktop environment – before the birth of applications such as iTunes – audio files (often with confusing names) were often placed in folders or collected in a playlist. Music programs read these audio files or playlists and in so doing allowed us to listen to the music. With the birth of programs (capable of selfgenerating playlists and music libraries and categorizing audio files into virtual folders, collecting them by author, year and album), however, the ‘file’ for music has disappeared. Once uploaded on the device, music ceases to exists as a file (for the user at least) and it ends up inside the blob of the mysterious music libraries from programs such as iTunes. The next step was the online audio library with which it is no longer needed to download audio files via p2p networks (thereby often committing ‘cybercrime’), because applications now offer us everything we want to listen to directly on the Internet. All libraries and all content are available without any control and there is no need for files anymore that are actually stored and catalogued on your device. Examples of these online audio libraries are Spotify and Grooveshark. This loss of ‘stored’ files in online audio libraries also extends to most other types of files; pictures and videos are immediately uploaded on social platforms, and textual documents are stored in