Hari's Corner

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How dependent are we on online services today?

Filed under: Internet and Blogging by Hari
Posted on Sat, May 25, 2013 at 19:17 IST (last updated: Wed, May 29, 2013 @ 17:15 IST)

The below is a post I made in the Flickr help forum, after pondering over the massive changes that Yahoo brought about to their premier photo-sharing service:

The recent changes in Flickr and the massive outbreak of protests here have really got me thinking about the fundamental nature of the internet and how it is affected our lives.

I've read plenty of people who've complained that the new format has killed their portfolio and the way they present their photos to the world etc.

Now I'm sure some of us are old enough to remember life without computers or at least life not dominated by computers. Even about ten years  ago, I never even dreamt about sharing my photos online.

At one point of time, Internet was a luxury, not a necessity. Keeping the dial up modem connected meant that our phone bills skyrocketed. We probably didn't even store much data in our hard disks, let alone online. We printed our photos and kept them in albums to show to our friends and relatives. Our documents existed on paper and we could read them without the requirement of a computer. Certainly most of us knew how to write with pen and paper.

Has it occurred to us, how the developments in the last couple of decades have made us so dependent on the internet and technology in general? Even around ten years ago, I myself wouldn't have thought I would spend so much time on the internet or interacting online.

Today, we store our personal information online, we do our banking online, I'm sure a lot of people buy more stuff online than in stores, we rely on our internet provider to give us a stable connection and if we lose it, we get mad. We probably read more news online than in a newspaper. Many of our businesses depend on connectivity and many businesses do the bulk of their advertising online. Services are paid for online instead of at a counter in an office or by cheque/check. Facebook knows more about our friend's friends than we do. Google knows your online activities and serve you ads that are "targetted" to you. Thousands of your private communications/emails are lying archived on the servers of these companies. Our privacy is determined by the terms and conditions of a Multi National Corporation's website, which they reserve the right ot change at their whims and fancies.

Commercial interests rule the internet. The provider of your search results is a profit-motivated corporate entity which asks people to pay for advertising on the top of its search view. They offered us free services and we lapped it up. They told us that we needed huge e-mail space and we needed to be more "interactive" and "social". We lapped them up because they were provided at no cost. The advertisements were only a minor botheration. Basically, we thought we were benefitting, but the real beneficiaries were the companies who bought and sold the advertising.

We used the services of these profit-oriented companies without thinking. We made ourselves dependent on them for our online activities. These companies are not answerable to anybody but their shareholders and the law. Certainly not to us. We end users are the bottom of the food chain whether we pay or not for these online services.

Today, we believe we "need" to share our personal information online or that we "need" to share our pictures and video online. We "need" to connect with our old school friends who probably didn't care whether we were living or dead before you found them on a social network. We flock to online services and don't bother to read their terms and conditions. Even software vendors today want us to download and pay a monthly rent instead of selling us software in boxed CD sets (where the medium is in our control forever).

And now, the trend is that, we are told that the place to keep ALL our data safe and secure is not in our hard disks but "on the cloud."

Many of us, whether we support or oppose these changes, had absolutely no say, nay, no idea that these changes would be rolled out as they did. Yahoo certainly never even bothered to provide a beta version. In light of the above, why would they?

And now, we complain because a major company has done an overhaul on their site that they believe will cater to the market they target?

I don't know. But it has made me think about whether we should actually place so much importance on our online services. Whether we should protest when our banks and institutions force us to go online for every single thing. And specially not depend on the internet alone for our social interaction or business.

Today our data is at least safe in our hard disks. Who knows whether the next generation might believe that hard disks are obsolete technology and the place to store their vital data is on the "cloud" where the company promises to keep it secure forever, at a price of course.

I believe that the best way we can battle the present situation is to take control of our data and stop relying so much on online services which do not give us that control.

My suggestions?

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