The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google" [Paperback]

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.

In this book Nick Carr takes the reader through history by exploring the similarities between electrical power generation and computing. Through an uncritical and historical metaphor it imposes his ideas of how the computing industry will change and improve exactly as the power generation did more than a century ago. Carr started this argument in a previous book "Does IT Matter" published in 2003, where he controversially asserts that, at business level IT is so widespread and advanced that companies cannot compete anymore with each other, as they all have the same IT capacity.
The Big Switch is a very well written and interesting book. It is divided into two main parts. In the first part, Carr gives an historical analysis on the development of the electric power generation, from the in house production to the construction of power stations and the provision of electricity as a service. After providing the reader with this background knowledge; in the second part, through another historical analysis, but this time of the IT industry, he shows how the IT is evolving in such a similar way as the power generation. Arriving to the conclusion that IT will be soon provided only as a service, just like electricity.
Carr bases his thesis on the fact that during the industrial revolution of the 20th century, most of the factories had in house power generation systems and it did matter if you had a bigger generator than your competitors. Production was highly affected by the capability of the factories to produce their own electric power. Therefore, having better and more powerful electrical generators would have given you an advantage against competitors. At this time, early power plants arrived bringing with them cheaper and more efficient electricity for everyone; giving the opportunity to all those who wanted to open a factory, but could not afford a power generator. Accordingly, when IT started to spread across businesses and companies it mattered about having a faster and more reliable system than your competitors. Many of the big firms of the past failed to keep up with the time just because their IT infrastructures were not as organised and efficient as the ones of their competitors. Nowadays, however, we have reached a point of stability and IT does not make anymore the difference. All the big companies are using the same technologies. Obviously there are different systems around, but still the gap between big companies has been levelled out and we are now in a time where a new change will come soon. Just like the way it happened with the power generation.
Right, Carr's thesis does make sense, so far. Especially, if written in the way that he does in this book. There are not many technology journalist and writers as talented as him out there. However, throughout the book there are many incongruences that are not analysed or even taken into account. He does not take in consideration any other alternative. This gives the reader the only option to believe that what he is saying is right without even arguing it. It has to be said that many of his arguments are undoubtedly true thus his predictions of the future are probably correct. Yet, many of them are wrong, too.
First of all, the metaphor between power generation and computing is misleading and at times erroneous. If looked at in more detail, this analogy does not match as precisely as the author depicts it. Perhaps, if we consider that IT can be provided in three different ways, then a more suitable analogy would be the music industry evolution. At first, music was only available through concerts and live shows at specific times and places, just like early mainframes. Then the phonograph changed everything and music became playable anytime and anywhere we wanted, just like personal computers. Finally, with the invention of the radio, music became a service, just like web applications (or cloud computing). As far as we are all concerned, today music can still be delivered in any of those three formats and very likely this will happen with computing. In other words, we will carry on having people developing their own applications, using local applications and using software as a service.
Carr states that centralised power generation is much more efficient than in house power generation. This unfortunately is not entirely true, centralised production of electricity is just cheaper and cleaner. Carr maybe didn't consider that about 50% of the energy produced in all the power stations around the world is lost on the network, before it even gets to our homes and in the event of a blackout we are left with none at all. What if, as Carr predicts, we transfer all our knowledge and information into the cloud and one day there is a fault in the cloud? The consequences are probably unimaginable. It is obvious that the cloud is the direction that we have to point to, but discarding any other option is almost certainly a hazard.
Another uncritical assertion given by Carr is that of examples of successful companies that have used the cloud to support their business models. What about the other companies? Do we all need to go into the cloud to be successful? What disadvantages are there to relying on the cloud?
Also, throughout the entire book Carr tries to coin the new term "world wide computer" this is superfluous and unnecessary. Although, the Internet is changing there is no need to define with a new term what we already know.
Concluding, The Big Switch is a highly recommended book to everybody interested in technology. The first part is a fascinating read about how it all started including in a story like format the beginning of the electricity era. In the second part, however a good level of scepticism and critical thinking will help create a better image of what has happened, what's happening and what will happen to IT in the very near future.

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?