How likely will "Cloud Storage" eventually replace Local Storage?

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I mean, imagine a future where every computer is just a chromebook, phones are no longer phones but just a “terminal” that streams the actual OS which runs in the cloud.

I mean, with 5G, I think its possible to make it seamless. And I think corporations push for this because they would love to have your data in the cloud, both for surveillance, and to charge a subscription for storage. I think this enshittifications would eventually happen to digital storage.

“You would own nothing and you’d be happy”

So how likely will this dystopian future happen?

I’d predict a 90% chance of this happening, and almost every would be okay, until they start overcharging for cloud storage subscriptions, but by then it’d be too late, there’d be a monopoly.

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hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Almost definitely not at all. There’s just too much latency, due to the speed of light. Local storage will always be faster than cloud, by a huge margin, unless you’re using an incredibly slow medium.

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Cenotaph@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You can take my 100TB storage array from my cold, dead, hands.

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- slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Can I really? I won’t murder you for it, I am willing to wait.
  
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- IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh don’t worry, they’ll cite “national security concerns” and claim that you are storing stolen classified information in order to plan for “terrorist activity”.
  
  There will be a no knock warrant, they’ll kick open the door, shoot anything that moves. And they will take it away from your cold, dead, hands.
  
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  - HK65@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Or more likely, desktop OSes will be locked down and will simply not be able to use it, while bank websites and other stuff will only work with locked down OSes.
    
    For your security of course.
    
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  - Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Aren’t there enough real problems in the world to focus on without the need to go inventing more? This is just imaginative rage bait. Focus on real shit that’s actually happening.
    
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- LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  “Sergeant, deploy the cryo ray.”
  
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partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I mean, imagine a future where every computer is just a chromebook, phones are no longer phones but just a “terminal” that streams the actual OS which runs in the cloud.

It will get close to happening for nearly all computing, then it will swing back the other way to local storage and compute, then after 15-20 years it will swing back toward centralized compute and storage. This has already happened 3 times.

Original computing was mainframes. “Dumb terminals” that had zero local storage and only the most rudimentary compute power to handing the incoming data and display it, and take keystrokes, encode them, and send them on.

Then “personal computers” became a thing with the advent of cheap CPUs. Dumb Terminals/mainframes were largely discarded and everyone had their own computer on their desk with their won compute and storage. Then the Netware/Banyan era began and those desktop computers were networked to have some remote shared storage. (there’s a slightly different branching with Sun/HPUX/DigitalUnix and Workstation grade hardware)

Then Citrix WinFrame and Sun Ray stateless thin clients showed up once again swinging the compute and storage almost entirely remotely to centralized heavy powered servers with (mostly) dumb terminals, but these were graphic interfaces like MS Windows or Xwindow.

Once again, powerful desktop CPUs showed up with the Pentium II etc compute was back under users desks.

Now phones and tablets with cloud has show up, and you’re asking the question.

So what I think will swing primary compute and storage back to the user side (handheld now) is again, cheap compute and storage on the device. Right now so many services are cloud based because the massive compute and storage requirements only exist in volume in the cloud. However, bandwidth is still limited. Imagine when the next (next?) generation of mobile CPUs arrive, and with a tiny bit of power you could do today’s bitcoin mining on your phone or process AI datasets with ease in the palm of your hand. And why would you send the entire dataset to the cloud when you can process it locally and then send the result?

So the pendulum keeps swinging; centralized and distributed, back and forth.
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algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s pretty funny how I’ve seen posts exactly like this one 10-15 years ago, and nothing has really changed that much from a consumer perspective.

It’s just simply cheaper, more reliable, and more convenient to have local storage.

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- ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  If you dug into history - with computers in the 70s-80s, we used to remotely dial into another computer. The terminal at your school (as home computers were pretty expensive) would dial into a stronger computer and you’d use up their resources.
  
  Every few years, I see that mentality coming back. Cloud computing. Chromebooks. Remote desktops. Stadia and gaming on-demand.
  
  Its fascinating.
  
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  - GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    People also know what cloud gaming means now.
    
    If that device loses service, it’s just a fancy paper weight until some nerd on GitHub spends a month rooting it and writing homebrew.
    
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  - FunnyUsername@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Wait, we had networking like that in the 70s? I’ve never heard that, do you have any other specific information I can look up? A computer at a school talking to another school remotely to use its processing power in the 70s sounds like alternate reality. That’s literally just the internet. What were they pushing the data over? Surely not phone lines?
    
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adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
“Cloud” is just a 2010+ term for multihomed server. Before around 1995, almost all Internet-related storage was “cloud”, with people using terminals and terminal emulators connecting to the mainframe servers that hosted their storage.

And yet, even back then, people stored local data on floppy disks because sometimes you needed something when your online storage wasn’t available for one reason or another.

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LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah the mass of goo will probably embrace it for the convenience, and the resistant few will be demonized as likely terrorists and go underground.

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- jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Local storage will always be needed in business environments, either for security reasons (sensitive files that can’t go online), or technical (speed requirements or offline access).
  
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  - LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Good point, I didn’t even consider business.
    
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lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Cloud storage will only last till they get a monopoly then when they start charging through the nose when they start the Enshittification phase . The scramble for local storage will begin but by that time they will outlaw it or some other bullshit

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- bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Theoretically you can host everything at home. You just need a connection that is fast enough.
  
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  - lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s still local storage if you are the one that owns the hard drives
    
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BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I would say it is unlikely - storage is so cheap that some form of local storage is likely to stay.

A terminal device still needs some form of storage to run the software to access the cloud. That might end up being some small storage on a chip but the difference is not between none and something, but some and more.

I also think there are enough people who want storage they own and control that it’ll persist as a concept. Also having devices that work when networks are down is a benefit in itself - attempts to make devices dumb terminals get exposed as a productivity nightmare when networks do go out.

I think big business will certainly try hard to lock people in to their ecosystems. Remote storage, remote computing/graphics processing are all ways they will try. But conversely there are vibrant communities pushing independent & private alternatives that I don’t see dying - whether thats Linux on PCs, or Graphene OS to take control of your android device etc.

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Engywuck@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

“You would own nothing and you’d be happy”

I’m fed up with that bullshit phrase. Please, stop parroting it. And, even if it became true… You’ll be happy, which is more than 90% of humanity could hope for.

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HoneyMustardGas@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Likely, never due to the three storage backup rule: save on local device, save on external, and save one copy on cloud. So you don’t lose your work or media.

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Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s already happening. Microsoft’s push to onedrive and m365 was to get everyone off of legacy apps.

Next will be ARM devices that have a multi-day battery because it’s all just cached apps accessing your cloud-saved data.

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- SkyNTP@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  AFAIAC, all that that achieved was to push me off of those MS products.
  
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  - Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I’m split. Outlook and other apps have turned into pigs but have very little competition to force innovation. Customers are just as complacent, and demand things not change at all.
    
    Moving to PWA web apps has turned the industry around. MS is dumping all of the old code that causes so many issues.
    
    I find other IT people expecting MS to not make even small changes, while also complaining about battery life and app reliability.
    
    I’m looking forward to New Outlook. Supporting HTML and https is so much easier than map I and legacy client code with dirty plugins.
    
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glimse@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I don’t see that as likely until 10gbps connections are the norm

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- chillinit@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Network latency is like seek time on a HDD.
  
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  - Kelly@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    True, but we don’t use HDD for much anymore.
    
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lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Unlikely, as cloud storage providers can’t be trusted completely. They be like “but it’s encrypted. trust me bro”, but every time they get the chance, like when acweakness is detected in tge cipher, they will peek or let some government peek. This is how magically your competitor ends up with your business secrets.

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- IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  They cant be trusted, but I think the average person will just trust them.
  
  I mean look at how many people who just sext on facebook or instagram or just SMS/MMS, or even send confidential information thats not end to end encrypted. People don’t give a shit about privacy.
  
  If the majority is okay with it, then they could just stop selling devices with local storage. And you’d have no other choice.
  
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  - Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The average euser does not trust them, they just don’t care…until they should have cared.
    
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  - lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes, but there will always be an important crowd that does care and that’s why cloud storage can’t completely replace local storage or home NAS. It can maybe replace it to like 50% max or so, but never completely.
    
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Kelly@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I still consider a microSD card a must for my portable devices so I can hoard media locally.

But I pay for a cloud backup of anything I produce.

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AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I think we’re already there but not in the way OP describes. People haven’t had great experiences with Chrimebooks and storage is cheap

Think of your Google drive, OneDrive or Apple drive. The most common scenario is you use local storage for reliability and responsiveness, but it’s always aynching to the cloud. Many of your files may not even exist in local storage but it looks like it does

Or consider Apples approach to photo storage. You can choose to use iCloud for photo storage and it keeps only a thumbnail on local storage. Your basic browse and search operations are reliable and responsive, and but you download the full photo as you need it

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otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
In some ways, it already has.

Lots of orgs that used to have file servers and data centres have been moving to things like OneDrive.

On-board storage space used to be a selling point for laptops, phones, and pre-built computers…but now some of them are coming bundled with a few months’ subscription to cloud storage. It’s been easy to find desktops with 0.5 or 1TB of storage space for years, yet the price of HDDs has been decreasing for years.

Plenty of people seem to use things like Google Drive as a way to move files or even to “save space on their devices” the way that we used to use thumbdrives or external drives (and yes, those are still viable methods of moving and backing up files, but it used to be the only way).

I think if your computer has only 0.5TB of storage, then the machine might as well be primarily a cloud storage-backed device. (Unless you’ve got your files elsewhere, etcetcetc). We’ll always need local storage for things like the OS and for more easily running whatever apps or files that were just downloaded off the cloud…so I don’t think it’ll ever go to 0. But 0.5TB is pretty darn close these days! Lol

And if you think that you’re not guilty of using cloud storage…tell me what percentage of your Steam library you have downloaded locally… Lol

(Steam isn’t cloud storage, but the principle is similar – “I don’t need to store my files because they’re available for me to download at any time from someone else’s computer!”)

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9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Check out Autonomi

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- PeachMan@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  looks like crypto bullshit
  
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  - 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Its been in development since before bitcoin tbh
    
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dudenas@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If by “seamless” you mean that wireless data speeds can soon match locally attached storage, there will still remain a political question of autonomy. We might some day have light terminals without storage or even serious processors with all the data and work still done in cellars and attics via 8G or whatever grade connection. If there will be enough demand for market and politics for devices to be available, of course. So yeah, I think, culture and politics hold the answer.

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- IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Seamless as in, the internet at such a hypothetical future would be so reliable, that if the software didn’t tell you it was actually cloud storage, you’d believe its actually local storage.
  
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Zachariah@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
There has been a ping pong between emphasis on the server or emphasis on the client since the beginning.

In the near future, there will likely be a trend to private / self-hosted clouds (instead of vendor clouds) for enterprise and enthusiasts that want data access in multiple locations. But at some point, all data could be local but synced to all your devices. That may be the ultimate client/server balance.

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watson387@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
For me, never.

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