Could SaaS upend your writing career?
Writer Compass Writing Craft
Dear Red,
Somebody told me I have too much SAAS. I thought it was a compliment, but they said my SAAS could upend my writing career. What do they mean?
Sweetly —Annie Author
Dear Annie,
First of all, there is no such thing as too much SASS! There is, however a fairly large risk with too much SaaS or “Software as a Service.”
Let me explain. Back in the old days when we played Pac-Man at Pizza Hut, we received software on media like floppy disks and CD-ROMs. Even our access to the internet required an installed application. Because it was installed on our computer, we owned it. Bugs and all.
Software companies got tired of shipping media all over the world to update their software and fix their bugs. It was expensive. The software world shifted to downloading updates and downloading installation software. But the software was still installed on our hardware. If the company died and went away, our WordPerfect still Shift+F7’d just fine. But there was one little problem with this—technical support.
It was difficult to troubleshoot issues because of the vast variety of hardware and the uncertainty of exactly what patches/updates had been applied to the original version of the software. Were you on Quatro Pro 5.0 or Quatro Pro 5.1.13?
Like Superman coming to the rescue, along came SaaS. No longer would software be installed on the local machine. Now, with the double-click of an internet browser, users would connect to servers owned and operated by the software company. They would interact with a known version of the software, with known updates. And if something went catastrophically wrong, the company could slave drive the developers overnight and deploy a patch in the morning. No harm, no foul.
Sort of.
The risk of using Software as a Service, or SaaS, is that you, Annie Author, don’t control or own that software.
You rent it. If you don’t pay the rent, you don’t get to use the software.
If your data is stored on those servers (looking at you, Mr. Google-y Eyes) and they decide that what you write is offensive, you could lose your manuscript, or all your notes, etc.
“But,” you say, “I’m not technical, and I don’t want to install patch after patch to keep my software from transforming into a Franz Kafka giant bug and dying a slow death.”
I understand. There are two things you can do to protect yourself from failing software companies and overzealous censors.
First, always back up your data locally. Save a copy to your computer and to some kind of removable storage device you own.
And two, always save an archive copy in the most compatible format possible. Your manuscript in a .txt (text) file format is nearly universal or software agnostic. Your spreadsheet in a .csv (comma-separated value) can be read by many, many applications.
Lastly, if you’re loading your data to a website, like those fancy AI editors, consider what they could be doing with your data. Once you upload to their server, even if you “delete” that file, it doesn’t mean they don’t have it.
Stay sassy, Annie, but go easy on the SaaS.
Red ♠️