Well said. Also there is a prevailing myth that the average user cannot secure his/her data and often one hear statements that what if your laptop goes under truck? So we can protect your data better than you do. I honestly say this notion is an insult to an average end user intelligence. The fact is if you can change the light bulbs you can run a personal server. If you find it difficult put the data in an flash disk and connect to your key chain. That will be much safer than cloud services.
Powerful vested interests working to amplify this myth because in the end you get a indentured customer base that you can fleece for years.
Fundamentally, there is no need for a lot of these ideas to be complicated. There is no reason we couldn't have home server/VPN software that was almost entirely plug-and-play for non-technical consumers, and which was still built on robust and well-understood technologies so the geeks could easily support it.
I believe the main reason we don't have that already is that the cloud computing PR machine stole the developer mindshare first. The kind of people who might have started companies to cater to the market I described above have instead started companies based on cloud technologies.
But there is no technical reason I shouldn't be able to run a simple installer on any home computer that sets up, say, a simple mail store and an IMAP server so all my devices can connect to it. There is no reason we couldn't have GUIs no more complicated than today's e-mail or calendar or IM software to configure fetching your mail or planning events and sharing invitations with friends/colleagues. There's no reason, aside from obnoxious DRM schemes perhaps, that we couldn't have a one-click-installed home media server that can act as a hub for your music/video/streaming pay-per-view/whatever content.
The technology to do all of these things is basically already there, it's just too often the case that it only runs on one OS, or requires messing around with a command line and text configuration files to set it up, or requires figuring out an absurd amount of technical details from 57,249 half-complete README files and three-year-old HOWTOs.
I'm actually a little surprised that Microsoft hasn't fought back against the on-line/cloud push, where it has been utterly destroyed by the likes of Google and shows no signs of resurrecting itself any time soon, with a comprehensive bring-your-own-cloud campaign that emphasized things like security, flexibility and reliability where the cloud hasn't exactly lived up to its own hype. They already had the required dominance on the desktop and in the business software market, and I can't help thinking that if they had tried to out-Blackberry a severely weakened RIM by offering a solid business product range instead of launching one underwhelming consumer phone after another, the mobile device market would look very different today. And once MS had the brand and credibility at business level, it would have the experience to attack consumer space from a position of strength, and the warchest needed to acquire a few key on-line/mobile players to help that move. But what do I know? I'm sure Windows 8 and the Surface (whatever that brand means this week) will be much more successful. ;-)
If you can figure out facebook timeline, twitter hash tags and dropbox sync you can figure out personal server too. If there is a will there is a way. All you need is awareness.
If you find running a personal server too difficult try tonido or any of those plug computers. You don't need to take my word. Just try and see. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Powerful vested interests working to amplify this myth because in the end you get a indentured customer base that you can fleece for years.