Return to Thin Clients
Commenters debate how cloud computing revives the thin client, dumb terminal, and mainframe era, marking a cyclical shift away from personal computing toward centralized control. They express nostalgia for local processing and concern over dependency on remote services.
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Spot on. Cloud computing is the return of the dependent client/server architecture we had with thin clients and mainframes. But not everything is cloud-only nowadays. You can argue even ChromeOS isn't. But it resembles thin clients. Same with massive clouds such as AWS/Azure; they resemble mainframes.
These things are cyclical:* Early computers (1960-1980s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server* Early PCs (1980s-1995): Local Processing - Remote Storage* WWW (1995-2010s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server* JS/ASM/Etc (2010s - near future): Local Processing - Remote StorageIts fully possible that we will switch again to dumb terminal model. For instance, once the hassle of local code execution takes it toll, someone will have the bright idea of just putting the web browser itself
"The cloud is just someone else's computer" - that ship sailed at least a decade ago.
I think you're right and it makes me sad. It's the resurgence of centralized computing and thin clents. Much more controllable and profitable that way.
Not really, Facebook, Google, the cloud... All essentially mainframe-like services. Most people nowadays don't need their own computer they just need a simple display/interactive terminal, what did we use to call those? Oh yes, CRTs, iPad for you youngsters.
I think they'll push for something even worse: all computing to slowly become remote, turning local machines into dumb terminals as in the mainframe era, like the last 60 years of IT development never happened. Cloud, SaaS and vGPU are examples of this tendency.Dumb terminals will be much cheaper: less resources, less (virtually no) storage, therefore many people will take this road to save money (ChromeOS anyone?), although in many cases they'll be forced to pay a lot more with tim
Both statements are correct. Remember that it was a personal computing 'revolution'. It would be a great step backwards to accede power to cloud service providers.Computing at the whim of others aka timesharing.Smile and nod but your mother has seen a few cycles of the industry.
The mainframe in your pocket that is running like a thin client because everything is in the cloud now. :(
Laptops aren't computers any more, they are thin clients connected a mainframe somewhere. That we call them laptops and the cloud doesn't change the use case.
It is understandable. With the risen trend of phone and tablet. Even some server can run on clould.