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Saturday Post: How the cloud will bring the future to the global masses

By | November 6, 2010, 12:31pm PDT

Summary: The combination of simple and cheap mobile phones, and cloud computing services, will bring the power of multiple supercomputers to the masses.

A simple wireless connection can bring the power of multiple supercomputers to a simple cell phone using cloud computing, the most powerful collection of technologies produced so far.

Yet the concept of cloud computing isn’t well recognized even among some of our foremost technology leaders.

Take for example, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas. They recently co-published a long article The Digital Disruption, in Foreign Affairs magazine, the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations.

They also spoke at the organization’s CEO Speaker series. Here is part of a report by Anne Nelson writing for PBS Mediashift:

“I’m extraordinarily excited about the scale of the mobile revolution,” Schmidt said. “… There are four to five billion mobile phones of one kind or another and we are approaching a billion smart phones.”

Schmidt added that the effect of Moore’s Law will be to transform smart phones into the world’s dominant communications platform in the near future.

The implications of the mobile revolution, he said, “are just beginning to be understood. But remember that these devices are more powerful than supercomputers were a few years ago, and we are putting them in the hands of people who’ve never had anything like it before.”

In the article and the talk, Mr Schmidt focuses on the power of the smart phone, and that it has the capabilities of a supercomputer from a few years ago. That might be true of some smart phones, but not of the “four to five billion mobile phones of one kind or another” that are out there.

It’s extraordinary that Mr Schmidt and Mr Cohen made no mention of cloud computing. Because with cloud computing, those four to five billion mobile phones can have the power of a supercomputer from today — not from several years ago.

I recently spoke with Ram Menon, Executive VP of Worldwide Marketing at Tibco Software. He travels a lot in India, and other developing economies such as Brazil. “It’s incredible how many people can now afford a simple cell phone. And it’s incredible what you can do with simple text messaging. Farmers can get real-time pricing information on their crops, and much more. There’s even a whole grass roots industry around powering cell phones, such as ways to convert a bicycle into a cell phone charging station. In remote places where there is no electric power, people can still use their mobile phones.”

With a simple text message system you can bring the power of a supercomputer to the cheapest and simplest mobile phones via cloud computing. For many important applications there is no need to place supercomputing power in the device itself. Simple cell phones can act as smart phones today, thanks to the cloud. That’s an amazing technological advance.

It’s strange that Messers Schmidt and Cohen have failed to notice this effect, especially since they work at Google, which operates the largest cloud computing platform.

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There are more posts like this in my book: In My Humble Opinion


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Please see the following Saturday Posts:

The Beatnik To Blogger Connection…

The West Coast Corridor: 1400 Miles Of Innovation - Disruptive Creation On The Fault Line

IMHO: We Are Becoming Nomadig…

The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches…


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Tom Foremski reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley at the intersection of technology and media.

Disclosure

Tom Foremski

Tom Foremski is the editor and publisher of Silicon Valley Watcher and Silicon Valley Watch. Tibco Software is an advertiser.

Biography

Tom Foremski

In May 2004, Tom Foremski became the first journalist to leave a major newspaper, the Financial Times, to make a living as a full-time journalist blogger. He writes the popular news blog Silicon Valley Watcher--reporting on the business of Silicon Valley.

Tom arrived in San Francisco in 1984, and has covered US technology markets for leading computer journals around the world.

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RE: Saturday Post: How the cloud will bring the future to the global masses
bay1 7th Nov 2010
It makes sense that we are into evolution of the connectivity data internet speeds not unlike what happened to the computer CPU and Moores Law. Connectivity speed versus cloud issues will be with us until the FTC gets it right and includes major public funding that support cloud computing based on Net Neutrality.
LOL what silly fools. Computers are a waste of time

And a cloud is something in the sky that gives rain.

Wake up idiots
We have been down this road before, somewhat. At the beginning of the PC "revolution" we discovered that giving the user the resources locally was more effective than getting them from the server.

With the exception of a few limited circumstances, I believe that sufficient computing power will reside in the mobile client. What may be inadequate now, will soon be adequate. That is what happened already in the PC industry from the early X86 CPUs until now.

With wireless systems, we also have the issue of bandwidth. Do you want to use precious and valuable bandwidth to send computing tasks to the server and back?
It makes sense that we are into evolution of the connectivity data internet speeds not unlike what happened to the computer CPU and Moores Law. Connectivity speed versus cloud issues will be with us until the FTC gets it right and includes major public funding that support cloud computing based on Net Neutrality.

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