Internet Space-Time-Turners

Living with multiple connected gadgets, it seems a natural way to move content from device to another. Like a photo taken with a phone, copied later to a tablet for better viewing experience. It also seems a natural way to use local connectivity for that. Like a connecting cable, or Bluetooth radio. But we do not do that too often.

We push the content to the Moon and pull it back instead. For some reason, when I sit on a sofa somewhere in Europe, moving content from a device held in my right hand, to a device held in my left hand, is quicker via a server sitting somewhere in America., which obviously means the data has to travel twice via my weak last mile Internet connection and cross the Atlantic there and back. Just to cover a distance of half a meter. But somehow it is faster this way.

The Internet - space - time must be really curved...

There are several space-time-turners responsible for this phenomena.

Probably the oldest one you know is email. It is way easier to send content via email than via any other means. Instead of bothering to use a USB  pen drive to move a PDF document from one machine to another, we often email ourselves the file. It is so widely used, that Amazon decided to use email as the primary delivery vehicle for content traveling to the Kindles. Each Kindle has its own email address. So when I want to move a PDF from my desktop to my Kindle, I simply email it. Of course I could connect the Kindle by a cable and copy the file over. But as I spend most of the time in the email application (be it Outlook or Gmail web page), using email is easier and faster.

Then we have a number of more modern space-time-turners. Like Dropbox. Once configured on devices, the files shared via the Dropbox service travel from machine to machine automagically. Yet they do not use any local connectivity at all. They cross the ocean too.

The iCloud does the same. I imagine it must be a liberation for Apple fans. Before the iCloud, to move content from an iPhone to an iPad required a PC with iTunes in between them. Now the PC is no longer necessary, but the data from the right hand to the left hand crosses oceans instead.

The good news is this ocean crossing habit will be slowly going away. The cloud will still be used as a directory, to move the metadata, and authenticate the devices. But the content will start traveling locally. Because our appetite for content grows faster than the technology capable of transferring it over a distance. I mean it is not unusual today to capture a high definition movie clip with a phone. A 10-minute clip like that can easily reach a gigabyte in size. Yes you hear it correct. One minute of uncompressed 30fps HD-Ready clip taken by my Samsung Galaxy Note equals 100MB give or take few percent. Uploading a gigabyte file to the Internet takes several hours today (10 in my case), with typical ADSL connection (or so called High Speed cellular data). Not to mention the costs billed to your mobile data account. The iCloud will not help here. iDevices too must start using fast Bluetooth, WiFi direct or a cable to move a high definition movie from an iPhone to the iPad.

And once we have the proper way to move video files, PDFs and other data types will use the same transport too. What is still important, the original space-time-turning reasons we use email and Dropbox et all today must remain in place. I mean moving the content from one device to another must be dead easy. Like touching or bumping them together or swiping with a gesture from one device to the other. Today it is not.