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The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny

by Nicholas G. Carr

3.67 · rating details · 446 ratings · 94 reviews

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 compute...more

Hardcover, 224 pages

Published January 7th 2008 by W. W. Norton (first published 2008)

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Feb 18, 2009

Nicholas rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: economics, internet

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Computing will soon become a utility like electricity. Unlike electricity though the applications of it can also be viewed as a service.

This is important because people can leverage their ideas even more now. A single man now has access to huge resources that he can purchase on a usage basis instead of having to front large capital investments. Costs of starting a company continue to plummet. The years of being in the red waiting for enough sales or users to start to get an ROI are g...moreComputing will soon become a utility like electricity. Unlike electricity though the applications of it can also be viewed as a service.

This is important because people can leverage their ideas even more now. A single man now has access to huge resources that he can purchase on a usage basis instead of having to front large capital investments. Costs of starting a company continue to plummet. The years of being in the red waiting for enough sales or users to start to get an ROI are gone. Just months of setting up a service and slowly paying more for increasing use.

Another important point was the fact that a company used to have to buy more computing power than their projected peak use. Now they can buy only what they use from these new utility companies. Economies of scale.

The beginning was boring. The rest was good.

I really need to stop reading these internet blog books. They're all fluff and not really worth the time. Maybe. They do read quickly.

Quotes:

"All of these businesses demonstrate an unusual sort of economic behavior that economists call "increasing returns to scale." What it means, simply, is that the more products they sell, the more profitable they become. That's a very different dynamic from the one that prevails in the industrial world, where the businesses are subject to diminishing returns to scale. As a producer of physical goods increases its output, it sooner or later has to begin paying more for its inputs - for the raw materials, components, supplies, real estate, and workers that it needs to make and sell its products. It can offset these higher costs by achieving economies of scale - by using fewer inputs to make each additional product - but eventually the higher costs overwhelm the scale economies, and the company's profits, or returns, begin to shrink. The law of diminishing returns in effect sets limits on the size of companies, or at least on the size of their profits."

"Tasks demanding flexibility, creativity, generalized problem solving and complex communications - what we call nonroutine cognitive tasks - do not (yet) lend themselves to computerization."

"In 2006, Texas marshals began setting up webcams along the border with Mexico and began streaming the video feeds over the internet. People all around the world can now watch for illegal immigrants, clicking a button to alert the police to any suspicious activity. It's law enforcement on the cheap."

"The most successful articles, in economic terms, are the ones that not only draw a lot of readers but deal with subjects that attract high-priced ads. And the most successful of all are those that attract a lot of readers who are inclined to click on the high-priced ads...In general, articles on serious and complex subjects, from politics to wars to international affairs, will fail to generate attractive ad revenues."

"Small incentives, almost imperceptible differentials, can lead to strikingly polarized results."

"The more that people converse or otherwise share information with other people who hold similar views, the more extreme their view become."(less)

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Dec 28, 2010

Howard rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: business, digital-revolution

Ultimately, I found this book disappointing. It is written in two parts. The first part tells of the move from individual production of electricity to the utility model where electricity was sold as a commodity. It explains how this revolutionized society as it made electricity affordable to the masses and changed the way industry produced products. In short, it remade the world as we know it.

The author then compares that change to a similar change in computing. According to the a...moreUltimately, I found this book disappointing. It is written in two parts. The first part tells of the move from individual production of electricity to the utility model where electricity was sold as a commodity. It explains how this revolutionized society as it made electricity affordable to the masses and changed the way industry produced products. In short, it remade the world as we know it.

The author then compares that change to a similar change in computing. According to the author, we are in the midst of the change from individuals and companies owning their own computing devices to a world where computing power and storage become commodities. This change is made possible by wide-spread broadband Internet access and brings a wealth of possibilities with it.

The tone of the first part of the book is upbeat and positive. The author seems to feel that the transformation in electricity was a net positive and seems to apply this outlook to the move to distributed computing. However, the second part goes in a different direction.

The second part of this book discusses the challenges that ubiquitous cloud computing will bring with it. However, instead of the positive outlook expressed in the first part, the author seems to have an almost Luddite, doomsday perspective.

Don't misunderstand. The challenges presented are real, and I appreciate the author bringing them to my attention so that I can be alert to them as we move through this time in our history. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have the same foresight that he showed in the first half of the book. Nowhere do we see the idea that the changes that bring about these challenges might also bring with them the new thinking that will create solutions to them as well. Very disappointing.

In the end, I think this book is a good and important read for anyone working with technology on a day-to-day basis (which is just about everyone!). So read it for the abundant and well documented information that it communicates. Just don't expect to find long-term solutions in it or be left feeling good about the future when you finish reading it.(less)

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Jan 14, 2010

Noel rated it

A good read for the non-techie who wants to understand the essentials of cloud computing and its societal and marketing implications. At least, that's why I picked it up. But it was also quite an entertaining vision of how the 'World Wide Computer' is changing life at every level.

Nicholas Carr delivers this easy-reading gloss of the digital 'switch' within a historical context that effectively tones down the usual hyperbole about revolutionary tech change. He takes us back to Edison an...more

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May 13, 2009

Grace rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, current-events, cultural-studies, read-in-2009

Author Nicholas Carr's insightful and easily accessible book, "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google," discusses the changes taking place in business, society, and culture due to the rapid development of computer technology across the globe.

Carr uses the electrification of America as a historical reference point to show readers how a new technology can revolutionize every aspect of a society - from factory workers' wages and socioeconomic classes to fami...more

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Dec 21, 2010

Jesse Wattenbarger rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read Carr's The Shallows before I read this book. He wrote this one first, and there is some overlap. However, the comparison between the effects of electricity in our society and the Internet on our society were not as pronounced in The Shallows.

This book gives an excellent, well-researched, and well-cited history of the adoption of electricity and its evolution into a utility. Carr then aptly compares the gradual evolution of electric utilities to the current evolution of comput...moreI read Carr's The Shallows before I read this book. He wrote this one first, and there is some overlap. However, the comparison between the effects of electricity in our society and the Internet on our society were not as pronounced in The Shallows.

This book gives an excellent, well-researched, and well-cited history of the adoption of electricity and its evolution into a utility. Carr then aptly compares the gradual evolution of electric utilities to the current evolution of computing that is happening now. It's a good and valid point. Just as manufacturers and production facilities once generated their own power and eventually moved into the electric grid when AC power and huge centralized power facilities that could distribute electricity far and wide became possible, corporations and small businesses are finding themselves able to make moves from providing their own computing infrastructure to using remote computing as a utility that can be centralized at large data centers and distributed far and wide. In this comparison, faster and wider data connections are like AC current.

Carr does a good job of point out the similarities as well as the differences between the two. For example, with electricity the juice is always on the production and distribution side but the application is always on the consumption side. With computing, not only can the data be transferred to the consumption side the actual applications can be transferred as well. Some discussion of the breakdowns in the comparison are provided and welcomed. It's not a perfect comparison, but it is a good and strikingly poignant one.

The histories provided are fascinating if a bit familiar to me. I love how Carr chooses really great quotes from poets, writers, and scientists that echo and encapsulate the culture and progress happening at different times in history. "Here is our poetry," wrote an awestruck Ezra Pound when, in 1910, he gazed for the first time upon Manhattan's nighttime illuminations, "for we have pulled down the stars to our will." In "The White City," Carr gives some tasty quotes about the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago which was created and marketed as a testament to the power of electricity and housed hundreds of exhibits of the latest electrical equipment. Carr tells us that a visitor, L. Frank Baum, was so dazzled by the fair that it became the inspiration for the Emerald City in his 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. So, even if these histories are familiar to me, they hold my interest with a dialogue of the time.

Central to Carr's theme in both The Shallows and this book is the transition of one cultural defining technology and the embrace of the next. In The Shallows, this transition was a bit more sinister, that of books to the Internet. It also described an abandoning of books and an embrace of Internet technology and how it would change us. In The Big Switch, we are not abandoning electricity and embracing utility computing. We _are_ however abandoning our personal computing habits and our privacy. These discussions, to me, are the most interesting.

He does manage to make some great connections between our abandoning of fire, candle-light and families crowding around one light and heat source at night to discuss the day and practice togetherness to the more autonomous family spurred by electricity. People can spend more time alone and in their own rooms since we have cheap independent power. There are subtle connections between these and his points about computing and the Internet--anti-social ramifications of new technologies. But, Carr is not a doomsayer. He stresses that technology is amoral. He just explores our cultural responses through the citation of studies, artists, and scientists.

One of the best parts is where Carr talks about the natural dichotomy of computing and the Internet. Where individuals and early "hippy" computer scientists saw it as purely a revolutionary, anarchistic, or at least democratic tool governments and corporations see it as a tool for control. And, Carr correctly points out that the original and most natural use of a computer is a tool for control. That was, after all, the original point of computing.

I can't remember the exact quote, but he quotes someone who says something to the effect of "blindly embracing progress for the sake of progress is folly." We should be cognizant of what we're doing as individuals and as a society. We should be fully aware of the benefits of new technologies and the sacrifices we're making in their wake.

In this, he sheds a lot of light, for me on something I've noticed in computer science. He doesn't spell it out discretely, but it does seem as though many of those in my field have been forming a new religion. It is based on the same premise of old religions--that humans are fundamentally flawed. The founders of Google believe this. Many computer scientists seem to believe this. And they believe that the computer, the Internet, and Artificial Intelligence is our salvation. And many of the visions of the young, brilliant, millionaires of today are based on this. And many of them have childish and unchecked goals that in the future will seem as ridiculous as those goals outlined by quack electrical futurists who claimed that electricity would cure all disease by continually pumping the air with charged particles or pumping human bodies with clean electricity. These new futurists claim that the computer will improve our flawed humanity by categorizing the world's information, holding all of our information so we don't have to remember it, and telling us what and how to think.(less)

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May 24, 2011

Tom Franklin rated it

· review of another edition

I'll admit it's difficult to fairly judge a book where the initial premise is that my career field is doomed and disappearing as he writes. I tried hard to not have too big of a chip on my shoulder, and to the extent I succeeded, here's what I have to say:

If Sarchasm is the enormous gulf between a sarcastic comment and a person who missed said intended sarcasm, there must be an analogous word for someone who misses the irony of their own introductory remarks. After presenting the r...moreI'll admit it's difficult to fairly judge a book where the initial premise is that my career field is doomed and disappearing as he writes. I tried hard to not have too big of a chip on my shoulder, and to the extent I succeeded, here's what I have to say:

If Sarchasm is the enormous gulf between a sarcastic comment and a person who missed said intended sarcasm, there must be an analogous word for someone who misses the irony of their own introductory remarks. After presenting the reader with an extended piece on IT Is Doomed Thanks to Cloud Computing, Carr tries to put this into perspective by describing the birth of the electronics industry in the US. Electricity started out as a standard business expense--each factory/business manufactured its own electricity. Once companies learned how to create it more cheaply (based on large-scale equipment and factoring in the economies-of-scale) factories/businesses began buying their electricity from electricity-generating companies. Electricity became a utility, something businesses depended on someone else to provide for them.

Before making his computing applications as a utility analogy, Carr spends several pages amusing us with the predictions that were made as to how Electricity would transform our lives for the better. Electrified water would be purified water; the public health would be improved via regular electric shocks, etc. These were huckster claims, ideals and dreams sold to a public desiring a solution to their ills through something barely tames, revolutionary and from The Future.

I have to admit, I saw this as the best analogy for the first section of Carr's book.

Cloud computing? It has its niche, but I doubt businesses are willing to put too much stock into it just yet. Internet connections are not as trustworthy as they would need to be to base all of your workday on 'net-based applications, bandwidth and throughput at most businesses is insufficient for many computing tasks and, above all, computing isn't passive in the same way electricity is. Computing typically deals with sensitive data (personal and/or business) and the regular news reports of data being compromised by hackers and unscrupulous employees should be more than enough to give anyone pause. The fact that the government can come in and seize the 'records' of your online activities through one of these software-as-a-service utility companies should give anyone a secondary pause.

What is on your computer and what is on my computer is still considered personal, which is why we still refer to it as a Personal Computer. The theory behind cloud computing is a step in a possible direction, but I don't believe it's the be all and end all that Carr believes.(less)

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Jul 25, 2010

Uwe Hook rated it

Ok, ok, I'm late to the game. I've seen Carr speak, read excerpts and just had to read the book before jumping over to his new book "The Shallows"

I've been working in the digital field for more than 15 years and I appreciated the meat of this book. The fat of the book didn't add anything to my knowledge of the computing industry. However, I appreciated his techno-pessimistic view of the world. I don't agree with everything he says but I appreciate somebody who's not cheering ...more

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Jul 22, 2009

Stephanie rated it

This book was a fascinating comparison between the history of electricity (and how it became a utility and changed our world) and what the author sees coming down the pipeline for the internet. We can already see some of the functions of "internet as a utility" in play now, with software as a service and cloud computing. Some of the more interesting parts of the book are where he talks about the societal ramifications of inexpensive utilities: the examples given for electricity hint ...more

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Jan 08, 2009

Romulo rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: digital, new-testament

Um livro que pode passar desapercebido por muita gente, infelizmente, porque nao teve muita divulgação no Brasil.

Mas o livro merece ser lido por todos que acompanham as mudanças que a internet está passando recentemente, sobretudo com a presença maciça do google na vida de todos os que estão online.

Carr, discute justamente a forma como as novas tecnologias tem um nível de conhecimento sobre todos nós e nem sempre sabemos o quanto estamos expostos. O autor levanta os riscos ...more

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Jul 27, 2011

Raphael Surber added it

Die Herstellung einer Parallele zwischen Elektrizitäts-Entwicklung und IT-Entwicklung ist imho nicht zwingend, aber den Einfluss auf die sozialen Strukturen und die Gesellschaft in beiden Fällen darzustellen, ist hochinteressant.

Hochinteressant ist aber auch, welche Prognosen Carr für die Zukunft stellt und was hinter den aktuellen IT-Entwicklungen auch steckt. Dass das Internet nicht zwingend zu einer besseren Welt und auch nicht zu einer Demokratisierung der Gesellschaften führt, wie das im Mo...more

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Feb 10, 2009

Leah Petersen rated it

Carr reveals an interesting time line to put the 'computer revolution' into perspective. By paralleling past 'revolutions' he normalizes computers role in our daily life, as yet another progressive step. His normalizing of computers is healthy I feel, as all to often people view their computers as autonomous beings, which are uncontrollable. His method describes computers as what they are, tools for society. I got hyped about this book from NPR. I read some of Carr's articles, which were precise...more

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Jun 13, 2010

Quinn rated it

· review of another edition

This book is set up in two parts.

The first is a really interesting historical contrast between the electricity industry and utility model with heavy parallels drawn into the utilitization of information and computing power. He does a great job of bringing context into the history of the computer - and I learned a lot of interesting new things about the introduction of electricity.

The latter part is more of a sociological prognostication... sometimes a little dystopian, s...more

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Feb 28, 2011

Cybergit rated it

Interesting perspective on the rise and eventual dominance of cloud computing. The author compares the rise of cloud or utility computing with the rise of central electricity generation at the beginning of the 20th century.

I must admit I was sceptical at first but the author presents a well thought out and extremely well researched argument. He predicts the end of the corporate data centre and for the migration of almost all desktop applications to the cloud. Just as no individual ...more

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Mar 01, 2010

Robert rated it

The book provides a good analogy between the technology of the Internet and the power industry. In many ways you can see the similarities and that may potentially help provide some guidance as to the future development of the Internet. If nothing else it certainly indicates that access to the Internet will be as important as access to electricity.

The author certainly makes some assumptions that some of the small changes we are seeing today will result in large changes to the way we c...more

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Oct 14, 2008

Bruce Sanders rated it

· review of another edition

The book begins with a history of electric power generation. Initially, every factory had its own power generation plant and a department to run the plant. Eventually, power began to be generated centrally by utilities and transmitted to factories. This allowed factories to get rid of their power generation departments and to save boat loads of money and become more efficient. The whole story of the insights and inventions that got us from point A to B is quite interesting. The author then ...more

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Sep 05, 2008

Dylan rated it

I spend a large chunk of my time online, and I threw in my lot with the emerging web culture way back in the nineties -- but I really know very little about how the web works in practical terms. So I'm an invested but ignorant audience on the subject of the economic and cultural consequences of changes in network technology.

That makes me the perfect reader for Carr's book, which is a useful layman's primer to the changes now under way. He begins by restating at some length his 2005 t...more

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Jun 02, 2008

Peter Murray rated it

Shelves: cloudcomputing, google-book-search, libraries, culture

Towards the end of the last chapter of his book, Nicholas Carr relates an anecdote about the visit of a guest speaker to the Google headquarters:[return][return] George Dyson, a historian of technology…, Freeman Dyson, was invited to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, in October 2005 to give a speech at the party celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of von Neumann’s invention [of an electronic computer that could store in its memory the instructions for its use]. “Despite the...moreTowards the end of the last chapter of his book, Nicholas Carr relates an anecdote about the visit of a guest speaker to the Google headquarters:[return][return] George Dyson, a historian of technology…, Freeman Dyson, was invited to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, in October 2005 to give a speech at the party celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of von Neumann’s invention [of an electronic computer that could store in its memory the instructions for its use]. “Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, “Dyson would later recall of his visit, “I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air.” After his talk, Dyson found himself chatting with a Google engineer about the company’s controversial plan to scan the contents of the world’s libraries into its database. “We are not scanning all of those books to be read by people,” the engineer told him. “We are scanning them to be read by an [artificial intelligence engine].”[return][return]So concludes this work — a view of technical progress from the emergence of electricity to the emergence of what Carr calls “the World Wide Computer.” In successive chapters, he builds the story line from the harnessing of electricity for commercial use to the economics of the migration from private power generation to common utility. He then uses that story line to illustrate the change happening with isolated computers being supplanted by a common computing utility. Call it a “grid” or “computing in the cloud,” Carr’s vision of the future is dominated by a computing infrastructure that is greater than the sum of its parts: an infrastructure that we are all a part of building right now and an infrastructure that is as inevitable as the emergence of the electric utility that our lives depend on. An infrastructure built on the knowledge embedded in the choices each of us make online and the machine’s comprehension of the knowledge gleaned from the scans of the books of the world’s libraries.[return][return]Carr’s work is easy to read — clearly the work of a writer who excels at expressing himself clearly. The ease at which one can read the words, though, only underscores the utterly transformative nature of the world now emerging. The picture he paints is not only of a rosy, utopian future, however. Carr gives equal time to the problems and challenges of the “big switch” to the World Wide Computer. But he makes clear that the World Wide Computer is in our future, just as sure as we are of what happens each time we flip a light switch.(less)

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Apr 27, 2008

Joe Raimondo rated it

Carr's provocative "IT doesn't Matter' set off a firestorm a few years back, and he's leveraged that attention into becoming a leading commentator on the emerging role of technology both in business and society at large.
Carr's breezy little "The Big Switch" discusses the evolving era of "utility" computing, developing a framework for understanding an emerging computing environment where most resources will exist outside of organizations. He makes the case for such ...more

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Apr 13, 2008

Raghu rated it

Recommends it for: dorai@thodla.com

Recommended to Raghu by: Reference from MIT Tehnology Review magazine

This book, though it deals with computers and technology, belongs mainly in the genre of an existential debate on the computer technology and mankind's future. I did not read the author's other famous book 'Does IT Matter?'. But the publicity surrounding that book made me want to read this new book from Nicholas Carr.
The discusses a number of issues. They can be briefly summarised as below:
1)Individual computing facilities in our homes and corporate establishments will be replaced b...moreThis book, though it deals with computers and technology, belongs mainly in the genre of an existential debate on the computer technology and mankind's future. I did not read the author's other famous book 'Does IT Matter?'. But the publicity surrounding that book made me want to read this new book from Nicholas Carr.
The discusses a number of issues. They can be briefly summarised as below:
1)Individual computing facilities in our homes and corporate establishments will be replaced by all of us plugging into the massive, global computer grid that the Internet is. The analogy is similar to electric utilities replacing generators in each house. This will have major implications for privacy and social discourse. I think that this is already coming to pass with offerings from Amazon, Google and even Apache.
2)Contrary to the touted image of greater democracy and diversity in the world thru the Net, the way computer programs track our clicks and visits to the various web pages, we are being more and more bundled within the groups of like-thinking social networks and contacts. This has great social implications for the future of tolerance, democracy and diversity. The author calls this 'ideological amplification'. To quote:
"Net users seek out like-minded individuals who have similar values and thus become less likely to trust important decisions to people whose values differ from theirs. Such balkanization and the loss of shared experiences and values may be harmful to our future democracy".
I think this is a very important observation from the author.
3)The author says that we have zero privacy in the era of the internet. As we spend more time filling databases with details of our lives and desires, software programs discover more patterns in us and exploit them for the benefit of corporations. Computer programs will discern what we want, what motivates us, how we are likely to react to various stimuli and eventually KNOW more about us than we ourselves.
This is also a fair comment though I feel that we have mechanisms to keep it under check.
4)The author quotes various interviews that Google's founders Brin and Page have given to the media. The Google founders have an ultimate vision that the search engine would enable the human mind gradually merge into the artificial mind that is created by the vast World wide web of data and the indexing engines and the search algorithms. This is a grand vision reminding one of Stanley Kubrick's '2001:A space Odyssey's HAL computer. Their vision is also that the Google search would give you what you are looking for even though you don't precisely know what it is that you are after. We can find this already happening in some ways even when we put in the not so appropriate words in the search keyword or even misspell it.

I found the book quite interesting reading and rather thought provoking though I may not agree with all the dire visions of the future that the author envisages. It is an important book to read.(less)

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Jul 17, 2008

Mark Cheverton rated it

Shelves: technology, business

I have to say I was somewhat unsatisfied with this book after a certain amount of hype. It felt like there were two half books joined together. The first a rather good exploration of the rise of cloud/utility computing drawing a strong analogy with the rise of electricity as a utility. The second half descended into a critique of how society has been impacted by the rise of computing and the Internet, and the rather gloomy prospects which the 'World Wide Computer' brings to the society of the fu...more

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Aug 10, 2009

Robert B rated it

Carr uses parallels between the early days of electricity and computers to explore the advent of cloud computing (“computing as a utility”). He sees much promise but also voices some concerns about the replacement of workers with software, social fragmentation as we only link to those with whom we agree, and security and privacy issues. The analogies between electricity and computers are the most interesting part of the book; the other chapters just repeat what many commentators have already s...more

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Jan 21, 2009

110 rated it

Shelves: technology

I didn't finish reading it but I agree with the argument that human beings are affected by the machines they invent (electrification and computing as in this book). It's probably linked to how the brain works, cf. "The brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge. If one deals too much with machines, he becomes like a machine and thus will become easily manipulated as pointed out by the author in http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/go... which is an extension of the conclusion of the ...more

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Aug 07, 2011

Ryan rated it

Shelves: computer

So far I enjoy the book. Carr is very insightful on modern technology trends, and as a technologist myself I find that many of the topics and conclusions he makes are reasonable. It's very informative to someone that is both technical and not technical. His focus on the history of utilities I found to be very informative given the general lack of public knowledge that I assume many people would have. The only thing about the book that rubs me the wrong way is his constant use of bringing up ...more

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Jul 15, 2010

Scaron rated it

Interesting book making a connection between the utility model of computing, and the spread of electric uttilities at the turn of the 19th/20th century.

The book is already a little dated - it was written before the rise of social media boom - which has much to say about some of Carr's arguments.

The comparisons of the utilities is the best part of this book

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Jan 03, 2012

Barry Maher rated it

Recommended reading for anyone who thinks that technology, especially information technology is inherantly liberating. Carr does a good job of putting the current growth of what he refers to as 'the world wide computer' into a historical context. If you work in IT or are considering a career in the field, read this book for a broader perspective.

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Nov 08, 2011

Stephen Redwood rated it

Burden's waterwheel changed industry, Electricity changed the world, computing changed it again, then the Internet blew open the doors and dramatic change is about us all over again. That's the essence of the book. It may sound a bit obvious, but actually the stories about Burden, Edison, Insull (who scaled the electricity grid), Hollerith (tabulating machine), Watson (IBM), Gates, Brin and beyond that carry the narrative are interesting and bring the whole thing alive with the kind of nuggets t...more

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Dec 19, 2010

Ben rated it

A fascinating book on the brief history of the technology that drives the internet and the inevitable move to the cloud. the book is setup by paralleling the evolution of electricity as a utility and the potential for computing power to do the same. Nicholas Carr pulls this potentially dry subject all together with fast-paced and entertaining writing.

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Dec 23, 2008

Nate rated it

Nothing great but its interesting to read about the launch of the electric grid in the early 1900s and the comparison to utility computing seems valid. The final chapters are fairly interesting as he attempts to put a damper on utopian techno-visions by reminding readers of the similar hyperbole during the early electricity era.

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Jan 12, 2009

Gary J rated it

· review of another edition

The big switch is between today's corporate computing and the world wide computer (programmable internet)..following the same developmental path as electric power 100 years ago..future move from mass markets to markets of one..economics driving new choices and business strategies and privacy and control issues..

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Jul 24, 2011

Hahleq Hahleq rated it

Shelves: ebook, own

Definitely filled with some interesting facts. Some of the assertions of the author hold together better than others, which doesn't deflect from the fact that his assertions do a good job of raising interesting points worth thinking about as individual users, members of organizations and other larger communities.

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About Nicholas G. Carr

Nicholas Carr (1959) is the author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (W.W. Norton, 2008) and of Does IT Matter? (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). The former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, he has written articles for the New York Times, the Financial Times, Wired, The Guardian, and many other publications. His popular blog, Rough Type, can be found ...more

More about Nicholas G. Carr...

Books by Nicholas G. Carr

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

Does It Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage

Il lato oscuro della Rete. Libertà, sicurezza, privacy

Aitī Ni Okane O Tsukau Nowa Mō Oyamenasai

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title link	preview: The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1153851.The_Big_Switch?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181444037m/1153851.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1153851.The_Big_Switch?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny by Nicholas G. Carr[/url]

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