Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25120 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 276 pages

Synopsis
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".

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking and disturbing
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?

Introduction & nothing else
This book starts off well, but then it goes down hill quickly. After the first few chapters it goes off on a tangent from the subject matter talking about it seems any thought that came in the authors mind that roughly relates to the Internet. It is very disappointing given the subject matter had the potential to put forward an alternative future view for the IT industry.

Will Google replace your brain?
Just like Thomas Edison's electricity plants centralised power supply, so Google's data plants will centralise supply of computing power. So argues Nicholas Carr in this illuminating book. Where his former work 'Does IT matter?' mainly dealt with the past of IT, this one deals with the future.

This book is partly an analysis of current trends such as 'software as a service', but it is not herein that its strength lies. It is mr Carr's insight in what this means for humans, not in a practical but in a philosophical way. Already we are outsourcing tasks formerly assigned to our brains, such as remembering facts, to Google. We are largely giving up our privacy as our every step on the net is recorded. What does this mean for the way we look at ourselves?

Many books purporting to look into the future take either an excessive sunny view of technological bliss or tend to sketch doomsday scenarios. Mr Carr steers clear of both, sketching a seemingly inevitable future with both benefits and drawbacks. It's quite clear he has been mulling over this subject for quite some time.

'The big switch', then, is a convincing book in its genre. If it deserves criticism, it is for the lengthy introduction before it gets to its real business. Hundred pages to introduce the electricity grid as a metaphor for the internet really is a bit overdone.