LOST IN THE CLOUD

The move to have more and more of your computer material, data, etc. stored on a distant storage space is being advanced. gmail, hotmail, yahoo, and others live in space but not your computer. Storage can be obtained for backups at what seem like pretty reasonable rates.

"EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend: Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand."

Thinking on the odds of a private individual being a target for invasion as much as a facility which is known to be storing the contents of millions of computers, I'd lay odds on the safety of my own computer. Neither method is foolproof but somehow, knowing that I have backed my data up on separate external hard drives, gives me a sense (false or otherwise) of comfort and security.

Years ago I was promised a paper free world. It only took one computer glitch to make me realize that if you want to be sure of being able to refer to something sent to you or stored on your computer that is important to you, a hard copy back up is a necessity. If a document was written by a word processing version no longer available, you might as well forget it, but if it printed in hard copy...it is there for you. Some of you might question, "Will you have it if your house burns down or floods?" Probably not, but I feel safer knowing that notebooks with hard copy backups are more likely to survive time.

But, I am a pack rat and save more than any of my friends do. I archive jokes I liked, pictures, videotapes I have taken over the past 29 years (now on DVD), save books (and even re-read some of them), and wonder about people who move on to their future without ever looking backwards. I consider myself a product of every year I have lived and do not want to forget any of it!