Arjen's blog

Cloud computing, from the frying pan into the fire

In a recent column (Dutch), Frank Benneker of Amsterdam University explored the consequences of the rapidly growing use of cloud computing. The shift of computer applications from PCs and servers to a single "service" provided through a worldwide network is probably as fundamental a shift as the earlier one from mainframe computing to PCs.

Given the objectives of the Dutch Open standards and interoperability policy plan, cloud computing seems the quick and easy-to-implement solution: I hear Web 2.0 enthusiasts say “put everything on Google Docs and we are all interoperable”. But just as in the case of the "liberation" of PCs from mainframe managers/suppliers, there are problems with cloud computing – potential snakes in the grass.

In December 2004 the Dutch government decided that the dependency on dominant software providers was a problem and had to be addressed. The Dutch action plan from 2007 was the first, tentative step in dealing with this.

The Dutch government wants to use open standards for interoperability, and open source to foster independence, lower costs and strengthen local development (services instead of licences). Open standards are fundamentally essential for interoperability. The Dutch 'standard' government desktop plan demonstrates to governments that interoperability can also be achieved with an imposed, top-down mono-culture. Give everyone the same software, and information can be conveniently exchanged.

However, the price of a mono-culture is high, both directly in money and in less quantifiable aspects such as security problems and an extreme dependence on a few foreign private companies. The latter is especially difficult to reconcile with the idea of a sovereign nation and a government that is democratically accountable. Surely our governments would wish to avoid relying on foreign companies to control the connectivity of our information databases in some nebulous “computer cloud”?

The crucial point is that even in this cloud, the hardware does not belong to the government nor is it possibly even on Dutch soil. The hardware can be located anywhere in the world, and therefore subject to multiple legal regimes beyond the Dutch government's control (or indeed, accountability).

Much of the Web 2.0 knowledge for the Dutch government and discussions about this are held on ning.com servers, and the consensus is that it would be pretty difficult to migrate away from there. Even NOiV, the Dutch open standards and opensource implementation bureau also holds regular discussions on LinkedIn instead of its own XWiki environment. It is only natural that people use what they know. However, bearing in mind not only the objectives of the Policy Document, but also the various Parliamentary Motions on the subject and the earlier decisions of the government itself, cloud computing is a major IT problem. To expect cloud computing to rid us of the issue of  “lock-in” that has been a problem for the last 20 years creates a classic example of 'out of the frying pan; into the fire '.

Our current problems arise from not foreseeing the long-term consequences of our IT choices. We need a separate government IT programme to ensure the freedom of choice that we see as entirely natural in other markets. Unless the cloud computing servers are on Dutch soil and we have access to the code under an open source licence, we shall only go from bad to worse.

The Free Software Foundation has the solution for these problems, a distributed cloud that we can all access. Servers that provide free software designed to guarantee our digital freedom. After all, this is the original intention of the Internet: all equal players in their own cloud.

Camping with the community

Just got back from a (too)short visit to the ETH-0 summercamp after doing a talk on the impact of new technologies (slides here: ODF | PDF). ETH-0 (a reference to the networkport on a Unix computer) is a week of camping with your fellow nerds, geeks, hackers en techno-creatives in the North-West of the Netherlands. The Weather was typical Dutch today but thanks to several big army-surplus tents nobody seemed to be bothered by this too much. If you like (Inter)networking, opensource, gaming, onine communities or the impossible assignments of the 'scavenger hunt' drop by ETH-0 this week.

ETH-0 started this Saturday July 5th and continues until July 11th. I can't stay the week because of agenda-hell but will do my best to clear my calender for next year.

Location: Het boshuis, Noorderdijkweg 23, 1771 MJ, Wieringerwerf (Google earth).  Meer info about the program, who you can meet there and what you can do on the Wiki. Do drop the organising crew a note if you plan to come over, this is a volunteer-driven event and everybody is expected to participate in a pro-active manner - this is not a hotel ;-)

3D Opensource printer

Twenty years ago my economics teacher told us 'Economics is the science of human choice under conditions of scarcity'. This definition always stuck in my mind because economists seem to invest all their energy in vain attempts to model the choice bit and assume the scarcity bit is a given. Material scarcity may seem a given (like the speeds of light or the fact that a peanut butter sandwich always drops on the floor with the wrong side down) because until now it has always been there. It used to be that hand axes were in short supply and now there's a permanent shortage of the latest generation of mobile phones. Making stuff takes effort and this effort has to be compensated by either a goat or digits in the memory of a bank computer.

But what if we were to take on the scarcity problem, instead of spending endless TV-news business sections discussing the behavioural consequences that are caused by it. Would that not be a much better use of our time? On the Internet nowadays scarcity for most people is not a problem, too much of everything is more of an issue. Selection and filtering of available information, news and media is the challenge, not its production, reproduction or dissemination.

The cost of information reproduction through the Internet may not be zero, they are low enough to be almost impossible to measure. A 250 euro laptop and a 10 euro-a-month Internet subscription gives access to more information, knowledge, media and communication than most of us can handle. And thanks to the vision of Richard Stallman we have all the software we need to make this Interweb thing run for free for ever. Just as important is the fact that together we can adapt this software to do new things that were unfathomable even a decade ago. This open way of working may make it hard for someone to become a billionaire but for our society as a whole it is clearly positive.

The Physical world seemed to be far away from such wealth and ideals. Stacking atoms on top of each other in specific orders and schlepping them around the planet takes effort and energy and thus costs money. A new type of 3D printer developed by a global team of engineers with a opensource mindset is a machine that makes three dimensional physical objects from liquid plastics (metals are coming soon) and data. Such devices have been around in experimental form for over a decade but they were always expensive and bulky. The difference with this Fabbers (or 3D printer or rapid prototyping machine) is that it can make all of its own parts and its designs are freely available for anyone to take, use, modify and re-distribute for anyone. It's free, self-replicating 'things' printer and for the price of a plane-ticket from the UK to Australia you can have one too. Then start making copies for friends and neighbours. Think of it as an Ubuntu Linux installation CD that makes a working computer out of dead hardware and this working computer can then make more install CDs (or distribute the install images online as a server).

On their wiki all information can be found to get one at home and start supplying your community with low/no-cost goods, including more printers and upgrades to those printers. It is the designers intention that this will become a true, global, opensource project were new  development of functionalities will be driven by the wishes of its user community. Here's a video were the inventors explain it bit more themselves. For now 3D printers print mostly simple plastic objects. No silk underwear or banana's yet. So if you think Star Trek replicator you might be a tad disappointed. But making an experimental tool into something everybody can use every day is a task the opensource community has a good track record on. After solving informational scarcity we will now get busy on material scarcity. As an economist I'd start specializing in 'abundance economies'.

Workplace 2028

After a brainstorming session with about 50 employees of Brunel Engineering last week I was asked to write a piece on the workplace of the future.

Office 2028
How are workplaces will look like in 20 years depend on two basic factors. One factor is the development of technological instruments to aid us in our work. Think all those IT-related things such as the speed and capacities of computers, networks and data storage systems. Scientific insights are put to work to make these instruments easier and more effective to use. Improved understanding of human cognitive and neural processes allow for better information-processing tools. Then there is the physical location (slowly but surely becoming less important); new materials make for better chairs, desks and ultimately an entire building specifically designed to facilitate mental work.

The other factor is us. Our (in)ability to actually use all these tools effectively my become the major bottleneck in improving the effectiveness of office workers. Techno-scientific developments tend to out pace the ability to change of most organisations (and the people in them) by at least a decade or two. There will be major difference between and within organisations. Age, education, upbringing and attitude will all be factors determining a workers ability to absorb the skills required to use new tools to do things better or to do better things for the organisations they are a part of. The type of work is also relevant. Graphics designers, architect and other creatives usually want and need the best possible tools and know how to use them. Someone writing a policy document can probably make due with the same word processors we use today. Some people may perform relatively simple administrative tasks in an organisations with a low level of automation while another performs complex, creative and knowledge intensive work were the limits of technology are sought. Thé office of he future therefore does not exist.

In 2028 many officeworkers will still be behinds desks wile others will be plugged into the Internet from somewhere on the planet. Some of them will work alone but more will work in teams assisted by intelligent systems that take most of the analytical and non-cvreative work out of their hands. Education, training, good leadership and access to communities of knowledge will be the determining factors of their productivity and creativity.

7-year olds get school laptops... in Peru

Wouldn't it be great for education if all school kids had their own laptops? Well, in Peru this is happening. And in Uruguay, Mongolia, Libya and Ethiopia. The laptops are designed and developed by a non-profit foundation called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) started by Nicolas Negroponte, formerly of the MIT Medialab.

The OLPC is a technical miracle. It was in fact considered impossible by all the major commercial manufacturers and software builders like Intel, Dell, IBM and Microsoft. That did not hold back the OLPC team though and they build something not only affordable ($150-$180) but also rugged, maintainable and very, very eco-friendly. My Mac laptop eats 30-80 watts, the OLPC does 1-2 watt. That matters when your primary source of electricity is a $10 solar panel. If the world switched to OLPC's from their current systems the savings on power cost (even excluding the environmental cost!) would be sufficient to buy 50 million OLPC's per year for the third world.

On the software side the OLPC foundation chose to use open source software wherever possible, both to keep the cost to their clients as close to zero as possible but also to allow local communities to adapt the software to their needs, wishes, languages and cultural conventions. All the specifications of the laptop (both hard- and software are available for public scrutiny and improvement from the OLPC wiki. This guarantees the independence of nations basing their education on OLPC devices, they will remain in control over the content and methods of education because they have full control over the technology.

But the technical brilliance is not the most important part of the story. The way digital teaching aids allow for new ways of disseminating knowledge is. When every student has a networked digital device that can store and display digital information, schoolbooks can be fully digitized. That gives opportunities to free the ownership of the information in them from the classic model of big publishers that exert control over what goes in the books. A schoolbook is then just a part of a wiki-type system where teachers, experts and other interested parties can collaborate on educational materials that is then shared freely with the world. Some of these contributers may be financially rewarded for such work in the same way we now financially reward publishers. The output however would belong to all of us and we would not have to buy the same knowledge over and over again.I've written more about this here.

The interesting question for western countries is whether they will lag behind places like Peru and Mongolia in modern education. Western European countries typically spend 150-300 euros per child per year on schoolbooks so there's no question that the budget is there. It just needs to be spent slightly differently.

Much has been made of the fact that teachers would not be able to handle the technology. But teachers don't teach kids these laptops, they mostly teach each other. But don't take my word for it. Listen to the 9-year old expert:

Some interesting ideas from Robert X Cringley on the future of education if all kids have full access to online information resources. As often with these type of articles there are as many good ideas in the comments as in the article itself