Technology As A Journey, Not a Destination

There’s a lot of lip service paid to “the cloud” in the computer world nowadays.  It seems everyone is trying to get in on the action.  I admit, I personally like the cloud as a concept.  That does not mean that I love every salesperson’s product that sells their solution to my real or imagined problem.

I am one of those IT people that embraces the freedom that cloud based solutions give me – less servers to maintain.  Google Apps has been one of the greatest things that happened at my work.  The power of collaboration and its ease are unmatched by other off-the-shelf products that could be purchased and installed on our own servers.  Plus, there’s no way that most organizations could come close to the computing power of Google.  It’s just a phenomenal product.

Google’s flirting with evil aside, they do offer a fantastic product.  I also regularly use  Dropbox, SkyDrive, and Evernote.   These free applications have changed the way I store and access my information.  When I got my Mac, I paid for MobileMe because of what I wanted it to give me in terms of a central place where I could put files or resources that I wanted available wherever I may happen to be.  It has served that need well, but I see that it’s more targeted to those individuals who may want to share their photos, web site, e-mail, and those sorts of things.  Being in the IT world, I have no trouble publishing the things I want to publish, so a solution like Dropbox is more along the lines of what I had in mind.  Don’t get me wrong, MobileMe is a great product, but I probably won’t renew my membership when it’s up next year.

At a recent technology education event I attended, a comment was made that when the iPad becomes part of the cloud, it will be a gamechanger.  I have to agree with that completely.  What the Dropbox and Evernote app does for the iPad are amazing.  When there is read AND write access to Google Apps, watch out!  I find myself using my iPad almost as much as, or more than, my notebook when I am at home.  Once it’s untethered from its storage limitations, I think it will change the way we interact with the cloud.

One of the things that is my biggest pet peeve is the tried and true – “that’s what we’ve always done” mantra that some people roll out when the pseudo-4-letter-word CHANGE comes up.  I struggle to understand what causes some people to embrace change, while others fight it at every step of the way.  It’s not an age thing either, even though that’s what most “young” people will say.  On every side of the generational spectrum lies those people who are terrified of anything different.

I never really gave much thought to it until relatively recently, but it has been gnawing at my brain for the last few days.  In part, I want to understand the mentality behind it, and in part so I can figure out a way to possibly help some overcome it.