Now as all technogeeks will be aware of, the next big thing to watch out for on the technology front in 2010 is ... amongst other things ... the much awaited Google Chrome OS. Hopefully, it will join forces with all things bright and beautiful to deal irreversible damage to current segment leaders Microsoft and its minions. So what is actually so great about this OS? Apart from being free and open-source, the Google Chrome OS will be a completely browser based operating system.
Bemused? Here's a simple explanation.
Consider your daily computer usage now. You load your operating system,and then you want to check your mail, your facebook account etc... so you connect to the internet, and ... accomplish your tasks. Infact, in today's world, there is very little we do on our machines apart from watching movies, playing games, listening to music, and/or opening Office for managing our documnets/spreadsheets/presentations ... which we do OFF the net. Most things require us to connect to the net and then proceed with whatever tasks we have at our hands. The Google Chrome OS plans to take this idea another step ahead. How? By making the entire OS load from the net through a browser! So your computer remains eternally connected to the web, and “boot”ing would refer to loading the operating system from the web iteself. Once loaded, you can access your document, games, files ... whatever you need from the web.
Google has infact, already made advances in this direction by their Google Docs service which allows you to store your Office work on the net instead of your own hard drive. This not only minimises the need of big MBs of disk spaces but also protects your files from system crashes ... becuse you can always access your files using a different system! What you use to access your files is immaterial ... it is how you access it! Anoher service that Google, and others have started is online storage and sharing of your photos and videos. We have today services like, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, You Tube, Metacafe for these purposes.
This fascinating concept is called “Cloud Computing” ... computing not on your machine, but accessing the “Cloud” somewhere up there (referring to the net) and then doing whatever you want. Cloud Computing today is getting much acclaim and recognition as a viable alternative to, and as a viable upgrade from our current computing methods.
So what actually happens in Cloud Computing is that you log in to the Cloud and accomplish your tasks. Say, now, you have an account in Facebook, or Google, and once you log in, you get “onto” the cloud to interact with people, in an essentially same yet different manner! With the advent of faster net-connections, even voice-chatting and video-chatting will become all the more common in the future, and the “virtual” cloud life will become increasingly real and merge with our real life.
What am I heading at?
Simply the fantastic concept utilised in the latest Hollywood thriller, Avatar, the story of a man leading two parallel lives simultaneously, one, his real life, and the other his Avatar's life!
Avatar is not a new story! The same old story-line of land accqusition by a powerful race from tribals has been used in various movies and novels before and, if you are aware of poltical incidences in and around Lalgarh, West Bengal, you can actually see striking similarities of fiction with fact! What is essentially different is the setting more so than the story. It is indeed the setting of the story that makes Avatar so fascinating.
Coming back to the the two-lives concept. When Jake Sully's mind enters his Avatar's body, it is akin to you logging into Google/Facebook, and interacting with people there! Just as Jake enters his Avatar's body and interacts with the natives! The moment he leaves his Avatar's body, that life temporarily stops. Here's an analogy.
You are not logged into Gtalk. Your friends, who are logged in, don't see you on their lists, or they see your name in gray signifying offline. Similarly, when Jake is not logged into his Avatar, the natives cannot interact with him. Suppose they move his senseless body to a different location, so when he now logs in he is aware of the changes in the from of change in his geographical position. Coming back to the Gtalk analogy, your friends may send messasges to you when you are offline, but it is only when you log in that you get to see the changes in the form of new messages!
So it is akin to one person living two lives simulatenously! OK, not simultaneously but having two forms of existence at an instant to choose from!
This is exactly the thing Cloud Computing also brings about. One life of yours is the “online” one and the, other the “offline” one. And today, one cannot deny that the entire humankind is headed that way! As these two lives continue to exist, it is possible that the separation between “online” and “offline” will cease to exist. To put it in Jake's words “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream”!!!
PS: the concept of two-lives also draws upon the ancient Vedic concept of the atman or the soul of a person residing in different bodies ... (though not at the same time!)
PPS: do check out the short movie that follows, developed by my father, and his colleagues three years back. An apt summarisation of the aforementioned idea.
PPPS: also read this previous post of mine.
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