Is cloud computing like mass transit..?
I’ve been thinking today that - leaving all rational, legitimate objections to cloud computing aside for a minute and just speaking about how it’s perceived ‘psychologically’ - cloud computing, (or at least SaaS) is a lot like choosing to travel by train or air rather than drive: You know consciously that letting someone else take you there is far safer than you driving there yourself, but the feeling of helplessness - of not being able to react - when something does go wrong, even if only imagined, is a greater anxiety than the thought of failure itself. At least in some people.
Or in cognitive-behavioural terms: if the anxiety is proportional to the awfulness of something happening, multiplied by the perceived ability to be able to cope with it when it does, cloud computing sends some people’s anxiety through the roof in a kind of emotional divide by zero error, a bit like those who suffer from aviophobia and can’t submit themselves to flying…
I wonder if cloud vendors have investigated how phobias are treated to help them better sell their services..?
Just kidding!
(But not completely…)
