The Cloud and the Crowd: Our Future

I have been busy reading 2 great books (yes... those long flights without Internet connections are perfect for that) that have become a strong influence on my recent work: Crowd-Sourcing by Jeff Howe, and The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. I realized mid-way through my reading that both cloud computing (i.e. the fact that everything we need that can be digitized - such as software, media, searches, bookmarks, databases etc - will be stored in the network rather than on devices and machines that we carry around) and crowd-sourcing (i.e. the drastically decentralized way of sourcing content, ideas, co-workers, collaborators and actual production via that very same network) will pretty much be impacting everything else we do, in the very near future. See below. And smile.

Comments

[Adrian]

Hi Gerd!
Great post. Coincidentally, I've just read the same two texts you mentioned and find that they compliment "End of Control" and "Future of Music" very nicely!

My only comment to you for further thought:
Given that the content will be on the cloud, won't that simply empower the ISPs with the "control"? I completely agree that ownership of content is "no longer king", in your words, but perhaps then ownership of the network itself becomes the new "king"? The outcome of the Net Neutrality debate is therefore paramount in realizing the effective use of the cloud.

Thanks again for your insightful post!

[Gerd Leonhard]

Adrian, thanks for the comment. The ISPs will have their hands full with getting content to become fully legal, on their networks (i.e. getting flat-rate licenses) - and since, if and when that happens, they will all have the SAME LICENSE they will need to compete for our attention, not the other way round ;)