I’m at home on this rainy day archiving my films and photos and came across this bit of wisdom from Kenneth Goldsmith.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/why-i-dont-trust-the-cloud/

I am following his advice and backing everything up, to drives, to dvds and some of it to the cloud.

But although I have no plans at all to go to China or any other repressive place where i can’t reach my gmail (and I really mean that!) it has made me think about the gmail. Yeah, it is convenient but I don’t actually own it.  I must not be naive about the Net. As Goldsmith says “Don’t trust the cloud. Use it, enjoy it, exploit it, but don’t believe in it. Or even the web for that matter. Many people assume that the web —and its riches—will always be there waiting for you. It won’t. ”

Goldsmith is one of my favorite people on this earth, the kind of person that allows you to feel faith in humanity. A poet and thinker and the founder of that great gift to mankind, UBUWEB which I blogged about the other day.

and enjoy this too: If It Doesn’t Exist on the Internet, It Doesn’t Exist http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/if_it_doesnt_exist.html