The cloud is the future you created

    Well-known futurist Kevin Kelly discusses the future of cloud computing, its driving forces, the impending changes they will make to existing business models, and why artificial intelligence will surround us everywhere soon ... and why it's not too late to become a part all this.
    Kevin Kelly, independent expert, founder of Wired Magazine. The

    cloud will soon become akin to the atmosphere - we will all dwell in it every day without even feeling it. The only thing we can notice is its absence. The cloud is becoming a universal environment that history has not yet known.

    Three driving forces The

    cloud was made possible by the convergence of three factors with the fast pace of development - data, network bandwidth and intelligence.

    1. Data

    Data is the product that is produced in the largest quantity in the world. The growth in data volume is 66%, this is literally explosive growth. Data volumes are already measured in exabytes, zettabytes, yottabytes ... At this rate, we will soon run out of names. We can hardly appreciate the scale of the data. We simply cannot realize the scale of how to produce and manage data at such a growth rate.
    But this new megascale offers tremendous opportunities: everything that can be measured will be measured; everything that can be tracked will be tracked. As the size of the sensors decreases, we will track almost everything. Now it doesn’t matter what kind of business you do, it’s a business with data. This is what is the impetus for the development of the cloud.

    2. Network bandwidth

    The network bandwidth is expanding rapidly, the network becomes wireless, penetrating everywhere. According to my forecasts, in a couple of years the amount of wireless traffic will exceed the amount of wired network traffic. The car will become a new office with an even wider channel than at your home. Bandwidth is a secret ingredient; as it expands, the cloud also grows.

    3. Intelligence

    The third important factor is artificial intelligence (AI). Part of this intelligence is already embedded in computers and robots, but the most important AI will come to us from the cloud. Even robots will receive their AI from the cloud.
    Google, Baidu, Microsoft, and Facebook are all endowed with gigantic cloud-based intelligence. But these are private clouds. Such companies do not sell intelligence as a service.
    In less than four years, companies like Amazon will begin to offer cloud-based AI services for applications such as data processing and pattern recognition. Already, artificial intelligence recognizes x-rays better than most doctors, interprets evidence better than many experts. Yes, and pilots control the planes on the strength of about eight minutes for the entire duration of the flight.
    AI is provided as a cloud service. Now we can talk about intelligence as a service - you connect and get as much “mind” as you need.
    AI is needed to make the cloud with its huge amounts of data useful. The more people use AI, the smarter it gets. The smarter he gets, the more people will want to use it. Artificial intelligence is a driving force in the development of cloud technology for the next 20 years.



    X + AI = Service

    Let's take X and figure out how to make a cloud service out of it. Our main goal is to take something that exists physically, add artificial intelligence and get something brilliant.
    Already, about 9,000 different cloud services are starting to promote “food as a service”, “furniture as a service” and “toys as a service”. This kind of intelligence does not occur in startups themselves; he is taken from the cloud.
    In the new business model, the value will be represented by the intelligence of the product, its adaptation to the user and suitability for the home and the environment. Take the oven, make it intellectual, and it will work as a program. All the hardware will soon go to the cloud and will behave like a program.
    The cloud provides scalability, cost savings, quick start-ups, easy prototyping, and device independence. Your phone, laptop, tablet, and even a home theater - all of them will be in the same ecosystem. Its scope and scale will make our environment more organic and adaptive, more like an ecosystem than a car.
    Ecosystem is a good word related to biology. It is the best suited for adding physical things to the cloud, because it is associated with the whole environment, and not with a separate device.

    Mesh networks

    It is generally believed that information is transferred from the device to the cloud and vice versa, and the Big Data server farm is located in the center of the cloud. But in mesh-structures, all interactions are carried out according to the peer to peer principle, from device to device.
    In the mesh version of the cloud, your phone communicates with another phone directly, and not through a cell tower. Communication takes place at the borders of the cloud, where different devices can exchange data directly: the phone communicates with the satellite, the satellite speaks to the tractor, the tractor communicates with the humidity sensor. And all this is implemented in a distributed system.
    This is a new kind of “Internet of things” (IoT), with which we do not yet know how to handle. But I predict that by 2025, 50% of all cloud computing will be done at the edge of the cloud, and not in its server farms.

    Distribution of everything

    How to implement cloud protection in a distributed system, without using a firewall or passwords that need to be stored somewhere? Protection needs to be implemented on the border of the cloud. But how then to provide authentication without resorting to a centralized authentication and authorization service?
    Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency in which security is guaranteed not by the bank, but by distributed accounting technology in the entire chain of transaction blocks (Blockchain). Blockchain is a very smart way to provide cloud protection, because with this technology, authorization and user identification tools are not stored in one place. Many Silicon Valley startups and Wall Street firms are generously investing in Blockchain technology because it is adaptive to distributed cloud services. Health, education, analytics and forecasting - all this can be implemented in different ways in the cloud, but we still need to learn how to use these opportunities.

    True global society

    A single, very large planetary cloud is a challenge for nations, countries, corporations and individual users, since we still lack experience in cloud technologies. After all, the cloud is developing so fast that it will soon surpass the overall computing power. The future is coming very fast.

    You are not late.

    To believe in such a future, you need to free your mind from prejudice. One thing is certain: while we are at the very beginning. Day One of the Creation of the Cloud. The greatest products of the next 20 years have not yet been invented. And after 20 years we will talk about what today does not even exist. Which shows only one thing: you yourself have to participate in the development of the greatest creations. This means that you are not late.

    From a keynote speech by Kevin Kelly at the Huawei Cloud Congress 2015, September 18, Shanghai, China

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