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.
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.
Yep, SSD latency is measured in tens of microseconds. To achieve that kind of latency with a cloud service, you’d need it to be just a few kilometers away or the light propagation delay alone becomes too great.
Idea: In the future where wireless network speeds are high, the OS image just gets loaded into RAMdisk each time.
Marketing: You get the newest OS image on every boot, with all current security patches and no (3rd party) malware, as that would be wiped with each reboot. This will also allow for even higher performance than any SSD.
It better keep a local backup so it can boot in low coverage areas. Of course that would mildly compromise the security aspect