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 everyone would be okay at first, until they start overcharging for cloud storage subscriptions, but by then it’d be too late, there’d be a monopoly.

  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
    2·
    13 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.

    • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      13 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.

      But people are also fucking stupid, so… They’ll buy anything, just sell it.

    • Captain Poofter@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      13 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?