About digitalization and not only, and not so much and not at all.
Life as a serviceZhKU) or in English "Life as a Service" (LaaS) has found expression in the minds of several people or groups of people: it was considered from the standpoint of the general digitalization of life, the transformation of all its aspects into services and the required new political system of capital communism, and a self-critical view from the US sees the service of life as an attempt to solve the problem of resource overspending (recognizing that Americans spend 4 times more resources than the entire planet sustainably provides) was. What these views have in common is the identification of a trend away from private property such as vehicles, computing devices, houses, and even clothing. However, how much does the concept of life as a service really relate to the already well-known IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and with which of them is it possible to compare? How to ensure safety and compliance with ethical standards, one's own worldview in the new conditions: consider the existing problems and some of their solutions.
Today I also came to realize the concept of life as a service, not yet knowing that similar thoughts had already been expressed. But I discovered this new concept for myself as a warning, as a boundary that must not be crossed, as a reminder that after all, life cannot be presented as a service. On the other hand, the very disclosure of thoughts becomes a service due to the openness of the network and the presence of search engines. Thought as a service allows you to instantly find like-minded people and evaluate the difference between your own views and theirs, while search engines create an invisible library, in which the truth is more like a landfill, but jewelry is thrown into landfills as recently with bags of money. But the space of the network may be reminiscent of a dump precisely because the thinking of mankind is this dump, that is, the language itself as a service is a dump of thoughts. But what distinguishes the intellect is the ability to accurately identify the wheat from the chaff, even if all the grains are uncertain and probabilistic. So with property, in the end, all tenants and owners are only temporary owners, although it seems to them that they can, in the abstract, transfer their rights to children and grandchildren indefinitely. But after all, first you need to give birth and raise children, and then it will be their right to accept the gift of our property from us or go their own way, not burdened with property.
My concept of housing and communal services differs from the statements of social changes in the way of everyday existence described above, in which the service sector expands so much that it fills almost the entire observable universe of everyday thinking. The difference lies in a different angle of view on what is happening: instead of full digitalization, I assume limited, and actually life as a service in literal decoding is nothing more than an analogy of the action of a person as a machine, that is, the performance of some work by him as part of his life. Previously I have identified the difference between people as service providers, and analogous in this case to providing software or operating system as a service, from a genuine creative path, the essence of which cannot be reduced to the concept of services. For example, you can hire a photographer or order a painting from an artist (and this happened throughout different eras), in which case there is a high probability of turning creativity into a service, or you can refuse this institutionalization and shoot and paint without any regard for the monetary system and pragmatic significance. This is the meaning of the previously proposed , according to which not only monetary, but also any practical motivation is associated with a pragmatic principle, while the cultural principle uses other grounds and much deeper aspirations. For example, religious and philosophical creativity, the desire to understand the world in physics and the discovery and application of pure mathematics to a large extent endow cultural pragmatism with the beginning for the development of people's activities, although I consider cultural pragmatism in relation to modernity as a phenomenon of postmodern (postmodern) society. Therefore, in a dream or a house, a car as a service, we can find completely different manifestations: from the provision of a certain set of hotel chains that meet the quality standards, taxi ordering services to the uncertainty of providing apartments for cohabitation within a certain community (for example, fans or travelers), receiving friend's car "ride". And in this regard, we can apply the degrees of depth of service found in the field of information technology to consider all other aspects of life in the field of service provision.
As you know, due to the development of cloud technologies, instead of owning equipment, you can now use equipment remotely for rent. It can be network devices or computing power. But equipment for rent is only the first level, although the deepest, in the direction of service provision, this is obtaining technical Infrastructure as a Service or for short IKU (English IaaS from Infrastructure as a Service). But in this case, as with a house, we get only "iron" or "concrete", that is, bare walls, electricity and water. How we will use water and electricity, create an internal climate in the apartment for life is the business of the residents. In fact, an apartment building is similar to a server cluster, from which parts can be rented out for certain needs. But under ICU, users don't get an operating system for computing or applications. If they receive them over the network, then we accordingly pass to the model Platforms as a Service or PkU (English PaaS from Platform as a Service) and Software as a Service or POCU (English SaaS from Software as a Service). It is important that in each case, cloud holders not only provide the right to use, they ensure the constant maintenance and updating of what they provide, as well as resolve emerging issues. In fact, our house, corresponding to the IkU model, should have security and a support service for residents, that is, it should be considered together with the managing organization. In the CSP model, the specified services are also supplemented with conditions for the direct implementation of user tasks by application tools, that is, the availability of an operating system, database management systems, network services, while the selection and maintenance of already final and intermediate tools (such as content management systems, office and production applications) to solve problems remains with the user. For a home, such fundamental foundations for leading a home life consist of storage spaces (analogous to a file system), work and sleeping places, amenities and places for entertainment with equipment and internal software (and TVs, refrigerators already include operating systems, including which you can increasingly install applications; beds usually do not have an operating system, but this only means that such an operating system is not automatically configured, nevertheless, the bed itself with a mattress is a platform, while bed linen is an example of an analogue application). Basically, furnished apartments and rooms with maintained bathrooms correspond to the PKU concept. Finally, the SOOC model means providing already configured (at least installed and upgradable) and ready to use software. In this model, we may not even guess what operating system provides the processing of our data, first of all, we will simply evaluate the versions of database management systems and software environments, the amount of available memory, the speed and reliability of the connection. Although for the purposes of safety and compliance with our own principles of doing business and life in general, we will be obliged to clarify all the technical details and compare various policies, ranging from ethical and environmental protection policies to the actual security policy. In fact, we do not break our connection with a reference to our own life, our worldview, just one of the common elements today is functionalism and self-withdrawal from the ethical implementation of transactions, when people are likened to those non-ferrous metal dealers who do not bother to clarify the origin of the objects of reality they buy up and resell. In the same way, the spread of the concepts of ICU, PCU and POC can increasingly alienate people from the idea that air coolers work in computer and data centers, solutions that are not the most efficient in terms of heat dissipation, but cheaper or more reliable, which leads to more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere today. Also with security, a personal inspection, accompanied by appropriate specialists, may be required to establish compliance with the requirements and monitor the actual implementation of the declared policies. Therefore, we are actually faced with a paradox in the transition to the service of increasing the need for control and management of delegation of responsibility, while formally most often the transformation of personal content and maintenance of equipment and support into a service is declared as getting rid of the “headache” associated with related processes. But this can happen mainly only in those cases when the user already thought little about the issues of backup and archiving, increasing reliability, the impact of his property on the environment, and ensuring security. But in this case, even familiarization with the measures taken by professional owners of computing devices and software will require him to study the basics of computer literacy in order to get some idea about them and not only the basics, in order to be able to control the activities of the services providing him. Similarly, when we check into a hotel, we begin to use soap, shampoo, water, have lunch and dinner in a restaurant, sleep on the provided bed linen, but we usually do not think that soaps and shampoos contain harmful substances, the water does not undergo sufficient cleaning until and after its use, the food in the restaurant does not correspond to one or another ethical and religious ideas. In this case, we are already unconsciously using the POCU model and the analogue of the software in this case is bedding, kitchen, toilet, television.
But everyone knows about changeable forms of furniture and even about exoskeletons that turn even the body into a service, especially if the exoskeleton or avatar can be rented. Already today there are not only mechanical chairs transformers, but also digital ones. What type of cloud service model can be attributed to such a solution:
Having chosen a POC and having received only initial information about the organization of activities for the provision of services and provision, we therefore always compromise in the postmodern era, or we can try to minimize this compromise and try to find a POC that meets security requirements, for example, which are not used in the provision of potentially dangerous chemical elements or find “green” servers that use only renewable energy sources to provide energy. The problem is that, as with other mass-produced services, we agree to some institutionally defined set of rules, such as privacy policy or compliance with the laws of a particular country, but we often do not have time to familiarize ourselves with the many documents and laws of different countries (which are subject to change), neither the ability to check the implementation of laws and policies, nor the resources to choose several times or several orders of magnitude more expensive (but better suited to our requirements) proposals.
Scaling the concept of cloud computing to other aspects of social life, the following table can be compiled, corresponding to the general idea of Society 5.0.
Table. Correlation of cloud service concepts with some elements of private and public life. *Note: “QS” means “as a service” abbreviation.
Cloud Computing Services
Culture and Art
Residential and industrial premises
City
Country
Ownership of infrastructure and related property
IKU
photo booth, camera rental from friends
kU building
CU infrastructure, CU premises
power plant safety, power plant infrastructure
PkU
camera, phone kU
kU furniture, kU equipment
KU museums, hall/stage/square rental
education, libraries
POCU
photo shoot, kU impressions
cuc food, cuc entertainment
KU public catering, KU entertainment, theater
CG activities, health care
Life as a Service
In general, people can be at various levels of approach to "life as a service": for example, renting a summer house, having an apartment in the city and using a hotel on vacation, just as they can use a self-configured operating system and office applications at home, use customized employer, making the necessary additions, and on the road to access cloud office and business applications. It is important to understand that regardless of the spread of the POC model, employers have already actually provided POC for employees, allocating departments responsible for the corresponding functionality, that is, providing employees with services for installing and maintaining software to perform functions in the workplace. On the other hand, network organizations and remote work can most often lead to the need to shift the provision of POCs from the employer to third parties, which causes the emergence of new markets in which the relevant POC solutions apply.
Previously, ICUs were already partly owned by manufacturers' service centers or third-party centers where computer equipment was serviced, and portable device manufacturers widely used the PCU level, supplying devices with operating systems and a basic set of applications. Today, the idea of assembling a phone from parts can be a little bewildering, while self-assembly of desktop computing devices is still a normal process, although less and less common. In general, the shifts from the level of ownership to IcS, further to the level of PkS and further from the level of PkS to the level of PkS are in themselves seen as making life easier, reducing associated costs. But here it is important to understand that there is equipment and infrastructure that is really idle and can be more efficiently used with the proliferation of networked organizations and technologies, such as cars or computers, an oven, a bed, a mixer, a drill, on average, not used most of the day, unlike a fleet of taxis and servers, but there are houses in which people live all their lives, bookcases in which family books are stored, a refrigerator almost completely loaded with healthy food, etc. People “splice” with things and disintegration can mean losing yourself. The choice of a technological model means not only the choice of political preferences, but also a philosophical change in the way of existence: a shift from settled life in favor of nomadism. Reducing transaction and infrastructure costs will make it possible to increasingly turn life into services and live more independently of place and function. This increase in efficiency is necessary to save the planet, so it is simply necessary for people to give up attachments and splicing, but they should be chosen and preserved in case of need, special feelings and attachments, especially since a home library in paper form can even reduce greenhouse gas emissions: instead the operation of a computing device, reading an analog book does not require additional energy, and its production either fixes some of the carbon in the used wood, or will eliminate landfills (if recycled plastic is used for the pages).
Life as a Service (LS) can be considered from two sides: on the one hand, it is the embodiment of the lives of those people who organize and execute the provision of services to us, that is, the embodiment of cloud services and the experiences that we receive, receive a part of other people's lives and enter it into your life as an impression during those periods when we receive POKU. On the other hand, this is our own life, in relation to which we apply either our own norms, views, beliefs, attitudes, or we trust the attitudes and scenarios of the world around us, but we influence the lives of others in one way or another, sometimes directly providing services, performing actions. Usually in social phenomena this process of mutual influence is two-sided. But, for example, in popular culture it is often replaced by a predominantly unidirectional process of influence from a position of trust in idols or brands. This is where we run the risk of “turning a blind eye” to breaches of privacy, security, and going against our own feelings and beliefs. And often in the case of digitalization, this means trusting a technology that even begins to rely on “neutral”. But this assumption can create a source of illusions about safety if, for example, we trust some technology, ratings and reviews, while driving to an unknown country, choosing the right driver and homeowner. In this world, even a reliable and true story cannot mean an acceptable level of reliability, while the mainstream news and public statements themselves are increasingly at odds with reality. And the reason for this is the unidirectional impact of mass culture, the absence of feedback, the basis for which is life as a reality, and not its functional simplification as a set of services.
In the materials indicated at the beginning of the article, the concept of housing and communal services is considered from the position of the mass consumer seeking services in the era of digitalization and is considered as the basis for a more efficient use of resources, objects of reality that cease to be property. But, as the commentaries on these visions correctly point out, the concept of ownership does not disappear in this case, but rather comes under the control or ownership of service providers, ranging from hotels with restaurants to cloud computing centers. As for the levels, the authors consider almost entirely only the level of POC, citing as examples numerous applications and nodes related to different aspects of our life. But it’s like a theater: you can’t turn it into an online cinema, and a theater rating page is not the same as a restaurant rating page. After all, the pages where people reveal their own zin can reveal its ingredients, but only as long as they don't become service pages (this is the difference between personal culture and pragmatics). In general, one can question the principle of displaying cultural phenomena on the network space and the possibility of representing, therefore, the cultural part of any aspect of life in a digital format, because at best such a display is only a strong distortion, and not at all an approximation to the abstraction of reality that we achieve , for example, with the help of languages.
But still, with the advent of the possibility of renting personal vehicles and even finding a fellow traveler within a common platform or leasing the right to live in your own apartment, we can expect the emergence of an independent computer network for solving office and entertainment problems, a wider distribution of storage networks similar to the one that is today exists for scientific distributed computing or for the emission of cryptocurrencies, for the distribution of files. But there are a number of serious problems here that do not allow some technological solutions, such as independent search engines, to spread as a public and widespread service. Firstly, openness itself is often in the field of globalization, which may not really be acceptable to most people on the planet, so decisions in which everyone is expected to participate with their own resources can be regarded as an attempt to oblige each apartment owner to accept a certain number of guests in year. Secondly, the business models themselves are based on the monetization of advertising and information provided, which ensures the activity of the largest information corporations, but which users may prefer to refuse or want to limit if they think about it. Thirdly, more beautiful and correct solutions often turn out to be more complex and costly to master and maintain, even if they are distributed free of charge. In fact, this is where we find the key dimension of POCs: often, the costs of maintenance, transaction, maintenance and security, and even more social and environmental impact assessments, turn out to be much more than the usual perceived initial costs. But on the other hand, these same costs and risks exist for traditional services, especially for POCs, although in traditional service organizations, the methods for reducing the corresponding risks are rather industrial. What may be missing so far, but what may already be a vision of the future, is a system of independent quality assessment and related quality parameters against which services can be evaluated. One part of such a system can be reviews of acquaintances and friends whom we trust and who are competent in a particular area. Another part may be independent checks that are now being carried out by auditors with a clear display of the procedures being carried out, but again, it is desirable that the conclusions be reduced to generally accepted criteria and be available for automated analysis. And another part can be open broadcasts of the process of providing services, for example, a camera installed in a taxi cab or in a restaurant kitchen, reports filmed by guests, visitors to data and computing centers, etc.
It may be difficult to evaluate and view all such materials, but on the one hand, modern technologies for processing big data, augmented reality, will eventually solve the problem of video processing, including live broadcasts. The creation of such a system will reduce the uncertainties associated with the transformation of life into services and will lead to increased awareness regarding this process. But in this case, the "mass" culture itself will lose its significance, because it will return to diversity in which many territories, groups, people will compete on general terms, but based on different cultural settings, where it will be possible to evaluate the process of cooking and washing clothes. just like the energy efficiency of a data center cooling system.
I think it is advisable to keep islands of “closedness” and not turn some aspects of life into services, but in general, the quality of life as open and confirmed, understandable and effective services should increase many times, including because unreasonable pricing for services of confirmed quality in the ocean will disappear dullness, as well as significantly reduced institutional and transaction costs, such as verifying compliance with standards, filling out numerous forms, obtaining permits, and studying and collating a variety of information. But the main thing is that openness in relation to the specifics of the provision of services leads to the disclosure of the process as a part of life, and even if this is not all of life, but at least its pragmatic part, it allows you to establish the process of bilateral interaction between the parties providing and receiving services, the process, which defines, optimizes and maintains social connections and connections with the outside world, not only in digital form, but in reality, a process that does not turn life into services and does not match services with life, but endows services with a vitality that exists through digital reification.
Conclusions: services, and in particular those based on digital technologies, reveal only one of the aspects of life, namely its pragmatic part, aimed at achieving some known state and meeting a set of quality standards. Above, we compared 3 levels of service penetration into life both for cloud technologies and for other aspects of life, where digital technologies also penetrate.
Levels denote the gradual replacement of independently carried out actions by the achievement of similar states by controlled external processes controlled by people, or directly by people. Levels and juxtaposition can be applied both to the lives of individuals and their associations in small groups, as well as in organizations. An attempt to give the concept of "life as a service" a worldview interpretation is refuted by confirmation that life as a service is just one of its many aspects and cannot be reduced to the service sector without losing its existential content.
Source: habr.com