Shooting at Bubbles

Back on April 21st Stowe Boyd had an interesting post about what he thought a future operating system should be which caught my attention and that I have gone back to a few times since then. In his usual style Stowe gives a good balance opinion of why operating systems; both Windows and Mac, have to change to something that is truly web centric.

While I agree with his premise that the monolithic operating systems like Vista needs to be taken out back of the woodshed and put out of its misery I don’t necessarily agree with him about some other points he made. Nor do I agree that a “webfooted” operating system is the answer either. The idea of a strictly web based operating system isn’t something that we will see because of one simple thing – connectivity.

What a lot of people in the social media and the Web 2.0 communities in general keep forgetting is that they are among a privileged few when compared to the rest of the world outside of US metropolitan areas. Sure they have their handy dandy EVDO cards or some other form of wired and wireless broadband access that lets them play on the internet 24.7/365 but there is an even larger portion of the world’s population that doesn’t and probably won’t for a very long time – if ever.

I add if ever because there will always be a section of society that lives on the wrong side of the growing technological divide due to the fact that they don’t have the financial resources to be a part of this. Not only does things like broadband access; or access of any kind, cost real dollars so does the equipment whether it be a laptop, cell phone or desktop solution. I know this reality all to well unlike the digerati of Web 2.0 who sometimes seem to live in a dream world where everyone can afford the tools needed to be included in this new world.

As I said though I do agree with him that operating systems desperately need to be re-evaluated and I think that Microsoft regardless of their apparent love of the corporate pocket book is in the process of doing this. Recently I wrote a post where I suggested that this is the road Microsoft will be going down when Windows 7 comes to market.

The one other point in Stowe’s post that I just don’t see happening is the idea of a local file store going away

The local file store is going away. I move all my photos to Flickr, as soon as I can. My documents — to the extent that I actually create Word or PPT style documents anymore — reside on Google or Zoho. Increasingly, the writing that I create and share with others has been created and presented through web applications, like Typepad (my blogging platform), or SlideRocket (presentations), Zoho, or Google. In essence I have come to treat the file store on my Mac as a local cache — temporary storage of the active docs I am working on or reviewing — but where the primary version is stored in the cloud.

Where I have a problem believing that this is a viable route for data storage to go is multi-layered. As with the idea of a webfooted operating system the underlying need to be able to have unlimited access to uncapped broadband is paramount. However with net providers looking for ways to constantly increase their profits we hear about them looking to implement things like data caps or trying to make net neutrality a thing of our dreams.

Along with that is the increasing push of video that is seeing everything from televisions shows to movies becoming heading our way down these broadband pipes. AS media companies look to downloadable video as the next big economic model for their businesses there has to be some place on our computers; or other electronic devices, to store those files. It would make absolutely no sense to first download them from the provider and then upload them back to the net to one of our storage silos in the cloud.

Will we see a change come to the operating systems we use on a daily basis? I think we will but whether it will be of the type that Stowe foresees isn’t something that I think will happen regardless of the technology that might be available to pull it off. I believe that we will always have; or for as long as broadband access isn’t available to everyone in our society, an operating system that will treat the web as a secondary input source.