I will try and be a positive contributor to the fora by starting a discussion.

[-N-]

So I saw this quote.I can't wait until we have to login to Google.com in order to use the internet.And it reminded me of a conversation I had.blah blah blah centralize everything blah blah blahWhere do you see the trends in technology leading? I will use Google and its services as an example.

What was formerly the domain of personal computing (data storage, checking email, media playing, and document editing)is now becoming web-based (Gmail, Writely, YouTube, Google Desktop). One can only expect this trend to continue, as Google (an abstract entity, for the purposes of this discussion) integrates itself more and more with the individual user. What could Google steal away from PCs next? Antiviral scanning? Gmail does it for emails, why not for everything? Media management? Just tweak Google Desktop a bit here and there. Taxes? It can't be that difficult to code Quicken in PHP or XML.

One can envision a forecoming computing era where "old is new" - where personal computers are dead and individuals simply purchase barebones terminal interfaces to connect to Google. Google activates your account somewhere in their huge rack of servers. Want to access your C-drive? Google will store all your documents for you, track all your changes, and simply relay back a monitor feed. Want to watch a movie? Google will sell you access to a DivX-compressed video, even copy it to your account, and temporarily open usage to one of its thousands of dedicated graphics units to you.

So how would you feel as an "individual" in this new era of computing? Would you resent the fact that your personal information is being centralized somewhere not under your control? That your computing machine is essentially powerless? Or would you applaud the efficiency of the new centralized (and seemingly more economical) system? Drawing a list of pros and cons might help in making your opinion be more worthwhile.

[escobert]

Seems like everyone wants to give you like sifi future techno stuff. It's the Jetsons!

[Old Manus]

http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/

[starseeker]

I doubt any company would do that without charging excessively because server space costs money.
And on the subject of sci-fi predictions, where's my nuclear powered cooker?

[-N-]

Yes, you will get charged up the ass and you will like it. Server space and bandwidth are decreasing exponentially, but as long as that myth is perpetuated (and people believe it) then it's nothing but gold for Google.

[Dr Unne]

The internet is too non-standard to take over all desktop applications.
I don't think complete and total centralization will ever happen, or at least won't happen any time soon. I don't see the option of hosting your own domain on your own server ever going away any time soon. Businesses for example would have to be insane to be so tied up in a single company like Google for all their data access.

We have millions of cases of identity theft every year, and the only reason it's not a big deal is that people don't know about it. Hopefully they pass some laws so that businesses are held accountable and are forced to tell people when it happens. But having everyone's data in one central place is such a bad idea from a security standpoint that I'd avoid it for that reason alone if no other.

None of the current technologies were designed for the things everyone is using them for. It's all hacked-on layers of crap. They need to fix a bunch of stuff before the internet ever completely takes over.

I stopped using Gmail partly because I don't like being advertised at incessantly. ( I think no one else cares about this and it will continue to get worse.) And partly because I don't like the idea of my emails sitting indefinitely on a server somewhere. Google may still have my old emails sitting on backups in a hundred computers all over the country. The chances of anyone reading MINE out of the billions of emails that are out there are pretty slim, but it's still not a happy thought.