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The Big Switch Our New Digital Destiny (Hardcover)

by N Carr (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 276 pages
  • Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co; First Editon edition (1 Feb 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0393062287
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393062281
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 70,347 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
In this eye-opening look at the new computer revolution and its consequences, Nicholas Carr explains why computing is changing and what this means for all of us.A hundred years ago, companies stopped producing their own power and plugged into the newly built electric grid. The cheap power pumped out by electricity providers not only changed how businesses operated but also brought the modern world into existence. Today a similar revolution is under way as companies dismantle their private computer systems and tap into rich services delivered over the Internet. Computing is turning into a utility. The shift is remaking the computer industry, bringing competitors like Google to the fore and threatening traditional stalwarts like Microsoft. The effects will reach further as cheap computing changes society as profoundly as cheap electricity did. In this lucid and compelling book Carr weaves together history, economics and technology to explain the "big switch".

About the Author
NICHOLAS CARR is the author of Does IT Matter? The former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, he has written for The New York Times, the Financial Times, Wired and other publications.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Switched On, 22 Feb 2008
By Jas (London, England) - See all my reviews
Nick Carr's publisher was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, "The Big Switch: Rewiring the world, from Edison to Google". I have been reading the book on and off for the last few days. Overall, the The Big Switch is a very pleasant, thought provoking and easy read.

The book is essentially two books in one. In the "first" book, Carr discuss the move to "utility computing" (grid-based, aka cloud computing) and goes on to describe a number of historical analogies on how electricity utilities and grids were first introduced during the last century. The second "book" is made up of a series of essays on the social, moral and policy implications of our digital world. Though well researched, I found the first part rather boring.

With regards to utility computing, (Software virtualisation. Data Centre consolidation. IP connectivity. ITIL processes, hardware standardisation. Shared IT Services model). The idea sounds great and more and more enterprises are seriously starting to think about moving to this model for the future.

In the "second" book, (which I found very thought provoking) Carr, explores areas such as privacy, security and "market of one" opportunities and risks. He concludes that we are heading into a new era:

"In the years ahead, more and more of the information-processing tasks that we rely on, at home and at work, will be handled by big data centres located out on the Internet. The nature and economics of computing will change as dramatically as the nature and economics of mechanical power changed with the rise of electric utilities in the early years of the last century. The consequences for society - for the way we live, work, learn, communicate, entertain ourselves, and even think - promise to be equally profound. If the electric dynamo was the machine that fashioned twentieth century society - that made us who we are - the information dynamo is the machine that will fashion the new society of the twenty-first century".

In both of Carr's books, he treats Information Technology as a highly commoditised, yet essential service. The switch to Software as a Service (SaaS) model will have a profound effect on society and business, in the same way as cheap electricity had over a century ago. Carr argues that the switch to utility computing will shrink the workforce, lead to increasing income inequality, and destroy the middle class. This is fundamentally the thesis that he presents. However, Carr admits that it will take a couple of decades before businesses will be able to make the leap to this new cheap and ubitiquitous infrastructure based in the cloud.

"The Big Switch" is very well researched and extremely well written book. However, as was the case with Nick's last book, "Does IT Matter?", The Big Switch is designed with ideas to provoke the reader. Carr does not present any solutions to the above highlighted topics. However, his often controversial observations leave the reader with a large number of unanswered questions - This is of course where Nick Carr excels, encouraging debate amongst IT executives the world over.

I highly recommend getting a copy now that it is generally available.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking and disturbing, 17 Jul 2008
By Adam Graham Malster (Taiwan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The Big Switch is a book about the future of computing but it begins in the past with the production of electricity. We are given a history of how technology changed the way in which humanity manipulates matter, and how this drove us to need to handle information in ever more sophisticated ways. This is an extremely interesting story and Carr does a good job of showing how these changes affected society.

This history is interesting in its own right but Carr's reasons for going into it are to shed light on our present. The analogy is made between the change in businesses in the past being responsible for generating their own power to outside companies doing it for them, and today's world, where we increasingly don't need to think about maintaining our own software and computing systems. Today we very rarely need to think about IT, often doing much of our computing online and never needing to maintain the software ourselves. More and more this is done by outside agencies, the most obvious of which is Google.

While history is a good way to analyse our present times, Carr understands that no historical analogy is perfect. The similarities between the revolution in providing power and the revolution in computing are very interesting but so are the differences. This is what Carr focuses on in the second half of his book. His thoughts on the way the Internet is changing the world both socially and economically, are well contrasted to the way electricity revolutionised our lives. He makes the point that in some ways new technology and change is for the better, while in others it is for the worse.

I found this second half to be very thought provoking and disturbing at times. We are often given to understand that the Internet is a force for freedom. Most people see the World Wide Web as empowering individuals and encouraging communication between them, creating greater harmony and understanding. Carr turns this on its head and instead shows us a world where we are increasingly spied upon and manipulated.

Carr, like many observers of technology, seems to see the march forward into a time when we are all connected together as inevitable. Indeed in some ways he shows that we are already living in this era. I found his thoughts to be a good counterpoint to the extremely optimistic views of someone like Ray Kurzweil for example. Like Kurzweil however I think that Carr is telling us that we have little conscious control as individuals over this progress. Step by step we will slowly accept what happens to us as the normal course of events. Sometimes this will be to our advantage and sometimes not.

Overall I think this is a very interesting book. There wasn't really anything about the GNR revolution (Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics) or the idea of the Singularity, which I think are essential topics. Maybe these are subjects for a subsequent edition. Nevertheless the book is timely and perceptive. At times I found what Carr had to say echoing my own thoughts. At one very eerie point I realised when he explained it is often easier to google something than to remember it for yourself, I had had exactly the same discussion with a colleague the very same day. Now Google is supplementing my memory am I already irretrievably a node of the world computer?
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5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, 23 Jun 2009
This review is from: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google" (Paperback)
The big switch is a fascinating look at the possibilities and the dangers of the next computing revolution. Superbly written
- Hugh Dawson
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting ideas poorly presented
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