The key issue is the cost of management. Thus far we focused only on computing resources such as storage, computation, and data transfer; but the cost of managing all of this—making sure the right software version is installed, that data is backed up, that spam filters are updated, and so on—is a significant part of the picture. Indeed, as the cost of computing resources, on both client and server sides, continues to fall rapidly, management becomes a bigger and bigger fraction of the total cost. And so we move toward an approach that minimizes management cost, even if that approach is relatively wasteful of computing resources. The key is not that we’re moving computation from client to server, but that we’re moving management to the server, where a team of experts can manage matters for many users.

This trend may be turning traditional technology services (from the perspective of IT departments) into what economists call “externalities.” The biggest risk for organisations here is probably going to be increased vulnerability to information security issues. The convenience of having everything available in a browser comes at the cost of requiring a network to accomplish basic tasks, and exposing ever more of those tasks to the Internet.

You change your password every few months, right? ;-)

Forensic investigators who are monitoring active connections can collect all network traffic to and from a specific computer, without the user ever knowing. There are many ways to monitor network traffic. If investigators have the support of network administrators, then the administrators can simply set up a SPAN port on a router, mirror all traffic, and filter for interesting bits. Some companies do this all the time, filtering for malicious traffic, proprietary data, or even keywords that might indicate employees are angry. Wireless networks are even easier to analyze.

“That’s Homer Simpson, sir. He’s one of your boobs from Sector 7-G.”

Related posts:

• Protecting your privacy on Facebook
• Repercussions
• The future of advertising

Although this story about technology contains opinion it is being posted in design as an example of the bad kind. I would have quietly coughed up five American dollars for an hour on the Internet, except for…

1. the “preroll” ad for a Blackberry
2. the popup ad for a Blackberry
3. the user agreement, specifically this:
   

   Usernames and passwords are Boingo’s property and Boingo reserves the right to alter or replace them at any time in its sole discretion. You shall cease to use and delete the password from any of your records upon expiry or termination of your registration for whatever reason.

4. the need to create a user account requiring said username and password, a valid e-mail address and my phone number

Yeah… nah. My time was better spent snarking.

Related posts:

• Simpson, eh?
• The economics behind ‘cloud computing’
• Repercussions