Fuzzy Future for the Internet 'Cloud'

The future of the Internet may seem cloudy at time. In fact, the future is a cloud. The Cloud.

This new Internet platform is expected to connect millions of users and computers simultaneously, utilizing data and software that resides in Cyberspace (such as Google Apps and Second Life), to quickly perform routine computing tasks as well as computationally intensive research problems.

Russ Daniels, the cloud services CTO at Hewlett-Packard, said this week: Cloud computing will allow people to bring technology to bear in the real activities that drive business and personal life, which are collaboration and information-sharing among people, according to an article in PCWorld. The Cloud will make data "programmatically accessible" so applications and services can tap into the information, rather than just having it be browsed by people. This will allow the Internet to solve new kinds of problems, Daniels said.

However, decisions made now concerning security and openness will largely dictate how the Internet of the future works, researchers say.

In this week's issue of the journal Science, Michael Nelson of Georgetown University writes about this already growing phenomenon of “Cloud computing,” and compares this critical moment in its evolution to the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1993, which changed the way that human beings communicate.

Nelson warns that there are many challenges that need to be addressed, such as how to handle open standards, security and privacy, online copyright, liability, law enforcement, and national security.

Nelson recommends an “Open Cloud” scenario, which would link thousands of organizations from all over the world into one global Cloud, but he notes there is the opposition to that scenario. Nelson suggests that, just as they did in the mid-1990s, the research and library communities will play a key role in the development of this Cloud.