Everybody has some digitized data - texts, and diaries, address books, photos, videos. Most of it is not intended for share. Some of it must be kept quite secret. These things used to live on a desktop computer at home. Unfortunately desktop box cannot be put into a pocket and brought with me everywhere. So naturally data moves to a place which is accessible most of the time - to cloud.
Recent years the amount of personal data in cloud grows explosively. Uncertainty with it grows too. Thats for reason. Our mail, documents, photos, updates etc are not in an abstract neutral “cloud”. All that data is stored on very physical disks owned very directly by a company controlled by a limited group of people. So it is quite possible to realize once morning that all your stuff is disclosed, sold or just dropped. It may sound unreal but last year changes in Facebook and Instagram policies, growing number of data disclosure requests to Google indicating an opposite.
There is a growing desire to keep personal data on personally controlled media. Unfortunately it is not realistic. Yes, most of people get more networked devices. But most of those devices - smartphones, tablets, laptops, - are not permanently interlinked, have limited capabilities, and cannot be considered as reliable storages. At the same time storage devices become exponentially larger and cheaper, and there are no signs of saturation. Thus privately owned devices cannot compete with large networked storage, i.e. with cloud.
The obvious solution is to keep private data in the Net but distributed (geographically and administratively to lower risks of data loss) and encrypted (to minimize risks of disclosure). This model is utilized in certain emerging p2p storage networks. But those networks rely on permanently connected computers - desktops or servers, nowadays such beasts become rare.
It worth to note than such kind of problem is not new. Communication networks - snail mail, telephone, Internet, - faced the similar requirements: they must be global, reliable and cheap to use. None of them belongs to a single organization, they consist of numerous independent service providers. Using this analogy Google and Facebook are similar to UPS and DHL - great but specific services. The common storage fabric should be formed from a lot of companies providing the same service and interoperate on a standard ground. At a certain time such service may become as common as cellular networks or broadband Internet connection.
Of course it won’t work unless it will be profitable for the service providers. Again the communication networks model may be adopted - service endpoints collect their money from end users and then it gets distributed among all participants. Modern communication networks operators will ride the trend or data giants will overtake and acquire telecom business - it may succeed in both ways.
Last but not least the data service must be extremely convenient to use. Fortunately it is mostly a set of technical problems. E.g. the most obvious issue - assure authorised access and encryption for a user using different devices, - can be solved using security tokens or biometric technology.
