Week 8 thing 18

Online tools. I'm on the fence about these. I can see the benefits that's for sure: multiple people across different networks can access the same documents and edit them, centralized storage so you can get your documents from anywhere and not having to purchase expensive software (cause wow office isn't cheap). But the other side of the equations there are a few things that make me hesitant to use them. Security for one. If I create a document I'd like to know for sure that I am the only one who has access to it. Also what if your internet connection goes down. ALl work has to stop then. I can just see a busy office stop dead in it's tracks because they lost their connection. Also what happens when the internet gets busy and bottlenecked. It does happen. If your productivity is tied to the stability of your connection then bad things can happen that would be completely outside your control.

Lastly is more of a philisolphical question. IF we keep putting more and more stress on the Internet will it reach a point where too much traffic is trying to go through to small of a connection? If we push everything to the web and it causes everything on the web to slow down will we then see a move to take things offf the web and put them back onto personal computers and intranets? It might not be something that is on the horizon but if you asked someone 15 years ago if they thought that traffic congestion would be as bad as it is now in some areas I bet the answer would have been no. If the internet can't expand as fast as our usage of the internet will we eventually cause it's own collapse because of congestion?