The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr

From Barnes & Noble

With the rise of Silicon Valley, pundits heralded the advent of "the computer revolution." But, according to former Harvard Business Review executive editor Nicholas Carr, you ain't seen nothing yet. In this persuasive, eye-opening book, Carr argues that we are experiencing changes in business and society as profound and stunning as the transformations of the early industrial age. He contends that cheap computing is enabling users to dismantle their private systems and tap the rich services available on the Internet.

From the Publisher

A hundred years ago, companies stopped producing their own power with steam engines and generators and plugged into the newly built electric grid. The cheap power pumped out by electric utilities not only changed how businesses operated but also brought the modern world into existence. Today a similar revolution is under way. Companies are dismantling their private computer systems and tapping into rich services delivered over the Internet. This time it's computing that's turning into a utility. The shift is already remaking the computer industry, bringing new competitors like Google to the fore and threatening traditional stalwarts like Microsoft and Dell. But the effects will reach much further. Cheap computing will ultimately change society as profoundly as cheap electricity did. In this lucid and compelling book, Nicholas Carr weaves together history, economics, and technology to explain why computing is changing-and what it means for all of us.

Publishers Weekly

While it may seem that we're in the midst of an unprecedented technological transition, Carr (Does IT Matter?) posits that the direction of the digital revolution has a strong historical corollary: electrification. Carr argues that computing, no longer personal, is going the way of a power utility. Manufacturers used to provide their own power (i.e., windmills and waterwheels) until they plugged into the electric grid a hundred years ago. According to Carr, we're in the midst of a similar transition in computing, moving from our own private hard drives to the computer as access portal. Soon all companies and individuals will outsource their computing systems, from programming to data storage, to companies with big hard drives in out-of-the-way places. Carr's analysis of the recent past is clear and insightful as he examines common computing tools that are embedded in the Internet instead of stored on a hard drive, including Google and YouTube. The social and economic consequences of this transition into the utility age fall somewhere between uncertain and grim, Carr argues. Wealth will be further consolidated into the hands of a few, and specific industries, publishing in particular, will perish at the hands of "crowdsourcing" and the "unbundling of content." However, Carr eschews an entirely dystopian vision for the future, hypothesizing without prognosticating. Perhaps lucky for us, he leaves a great number of questions unanswered. (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews

A leading technological rabble-rouser prognosticates a world beyond Web 2.0. Carr (Does IT Matter?, 2004) rattled the confidence of international conglomerates with a 2003 article in the Harvard Business Review declaring that proprietary information technology is superfluous to the industries it augments. Here, he examines the burgeoning phenomenon of "utility computing": bundling data processing into a metered service not unlike the electric company. The concept immediately recalls the second-generation applications trumpeted by Wired, exemplified by Google and now infiltrating the wireless world. Indeed, the author wastes no time in holding up the multifaceted Google and its offshoots as prime examples of the new practice of employing Ethernet-linked server farms processing simultaneous data. The first section builds Carr's case using historical analogies that trace, for example, a direct line from Edison's light bulb to the "White City" of the 1893 World's Fair to the social impacts of cheap, available power in the 20th century. He makes some salient points about the duplication of efforts among IT departments guarding their own fiefdoms. A chapter titled "Goodbye, Mr. Gates" posits the rise of utility computing as a primal shift between the PC age and the new world, with a few gloomy forecasts predicting that more traditional companies (dubbed "weapons suppliers in the IT arms race") may soon find that their wellspring has dried up. The second section examines the behavior of users in this new matrix and surveys the "economic, political, and social upheaval" wrought by the change in operating models. Examining this change, Carr seesaws from the dismal fallout (the death of newspapers)to the merely curious side effects (the nontraditional "game" called Second Life). His broader sociological observations are punctuated by a pair of ominously prescient chapters about privacy issues and cyberterrorism. Carr makes some sophisticated leaps of logic tying together the causes and effects of this evolving network of information, but many of his observations are fairly old news. Agent: Ralph Sagalyn/Sagalyn Literary Agency

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents