These words by Apple Co-Founder, Steve Woz, gave me pause. Not just a little pause but a great, big, scary pause.

In an article by CNET.Com, culled from Agence France-Presse, Steve Woz had this to say about the future of iCloud storage:

“I really worry about everything going to the cloud,” he said. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”

He added: “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away” through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to.

“I want to feel that I own things,” Wozniak said. “A lot of people feel, ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer,’ but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”

Okay, so I thought it was just me. My age! My unwillingness to release control of my life to something intangible.

But, I guess many people are questioning the wisdom in storing their information on some remote server that they have little to no control over.

In a perfect world, this should work and should be the answer to all our storage and curating problems.

And, with the treadmill-like pace of today’s world, we want a simple, fast and, hopefully, safe solution in which to archive our daily “stuff” – from photos, to documents, to finances, and more.

The “simple and fast” is a no-brainer with cloud service – but the “safe”? Not as much.

And truth be told, is it really that difficult to organize your routine in a way that encompasses saving your work to an external hard drive? How lazy are we becoming here? We have to take responsibility for our work and decide where and how it is stored.

Once you have added the proper folders to your external drive, it would simply be a matter of routinely saving your day’s work to the proper folder. Part of your daily regimen – like brushing your teeth or taking a shower.

And, with Time Machine and Time Capsule, you need not do a thing except make certain that the system is indeed working from time-to-time. Once, you set the back-up schedule for Time Machine, all your data is systematically backed up and ready for recovery if need be.

I think cloud back-up is great for movies and music and, perhaps, sharing some of your photos once the new PhotoStream kicks in via iOS 6 this Fall.

But, I presently use iMessage to send pictures and videos to friends and family and it works incredibly well. For others who do not have Apple devices, then email is just as good and instantaneous.

However, that being said, I would still use an external drive for permanently saving all this data, simply because it is tangible and it is yours!

And I would never (sorry, Mint.Com) store my financial data in the cloud. That is just asking for trouble.

So, the great Steve Woz has spoken. I agree with him. Do you? Let’s hear your take in the comments section.