"Our future is small computers + high speed internet available everywhere + online storage and services. Not the other way around."
Assuming our current technology, maybe. If I have limitless storage, and you do, too, I can be your backup, and you mine. Trickling in the background, always backing up. Or we could all have a mesh network backup doing similar to Dropbox crossed with Napster, without the centralization of either. Depending on bandwidth and storage growth, of course. Maybe the future is small computers, high-speed Internet available everywhere, and mass mesh storage/backup. Hopefully with encryption, however it goes, please God.
Mesh networks are still online storage from a users perspective in that it's limited by the users network connection. Also there is some software capable of this the problem is giving up a fair amount of bandwidth and storage capacity for somewhat safe but free backups vs paying ~50$ a year for safer backups without the headache.
PS: Popular torrent files are basically this already as they can persist a long time after the initial seeder stops seeding.
In this case, you're only limited by your network speed in the event of data-destroying event. In the normal case it's completely local, which has much less headache than any network option most of the time.
Assuming our current technology, maybe. If I have limitless storage, and you do, too, I can be your backup, and you mine. Trickling in the background, always backing up. Or we could all have a mesh network backup doing similar to Dropbox crossed with Napster, without the centralization of either. Depending on bandwidth and storage growth, of course. Maybe the future is small computers, high-speed Internet available everywhere, and mass mesh storage/backup. Hopefully with encryption, however it goes, please God.