Rama Mamuaya raised a question of can we really trust cloud computing. He poses 2 main issues; maintaining the lifespan and ensuring the security of shared information in the cloud.

Harddrives malfunction, computer break, employees move on. We're *really* still facing the same challenges;

how do one ensure information's perpetual/temporal existence?

Redundancy had always been the key to ensure information existence, and I don't think it'll change in the cloud computing era.

The cloud computing redefines alot of things, the way we interact, manage and *by the end of the day* the way we claim ownership of information that we produce. It's a tricky problem indeed, and we rely on 'the system' to sort this out for us. The legal system all around the world is still trying to play catch up with the leap that we've made on technology and its impact.

I hate to be pessimistic about such positive things. Cloud computing allows us to interconnect and collaborate like we've never collaborate before. For god sake, stop emailing Microsoft Word files around and start sharing, and collaborate. With the advances of modern licensing system (GPL, CC, etc) and the increasing industry awareness on privacy and personal security, I think we have a nice future ahead of us.

When things do go awry, at least now we have the power of spreading information faster than we ever before to complain about a cloud computing vendor's unweilding behavior.