As those of us who blog on Enterprise 2.0 have been pegged as counter-cultural revolutionaries and labeled "Hippies," I thought I would extend the metaphor.
My hard disk on my laptop crashed this week. Without warning, one minute my data was there, the next minute it was gone. And no, of course I never ran backups. I initially panicked. But, slowly, I realized that most of my"work" was high above my desk... in the cloud. Whether it was documents people emailed me, spreadsheets I was working on, presentations, even my photos- most of what I really need and care about is on the web, not on my computer. My email (with all documents attached) is on my online email servers (Google mail, my own web-based ISP mail), the wiki I've been collaborating on (SocialText), my personal photo accounts (Flickr, Snapfish), and even good background material on the Enterprise 2.0 market on the wiki at Itensil. Further, every web site/blog that has had any importance to me is cataloged at Del.icio.us.; my daily blog reads are on NetVibes; the groups I participate in are all online (Google groups); I'm even part of a social network on Ning. I'm sure there are more proofs of my web life (oh, yeah, Second Life). So hard disk? I hardly knew ya.
Inhale the web. It's good for your new millennium health.
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