The Big Switch Quotes

“We are soon to have everywhere,” wrote one futurist, “smoke annihilators, dust absorbers, ozonators, sterilizers of water, air, food, and clothing, and accident preventers on streets, elevated roads, and subways.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“IBM.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“More than that, though, the way the punch-card tabulator came to be sold and used would set the pattern for the entire modern history of business computing.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“The machine, called a punch-card tabulator, had been invented in the early 1880s by an engineer named Herman Hollerith for the purpose of automating the US census.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“In 1930, it hit 80 percent. Soon, it was over 90 percent. Only a handful of manufacturers, mainly those running big factories in remote locations, continued to produce their own current. Thanks to Samuel Insull, the age of the private power plant was over. The utility had triumphed.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“it has become almost impossible for us to imagine what life was like before electricity began to flow through the sockets in our walls.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“It worked. Chicago’s manufacturers flocked to Chicago Edison, which Insull soon renamed the Commonwealth Edison Company. In 1908, a reporter for Electrical World and Engineer noted that “although isolated plants are still numerous in Chicago, they were never so hard pressed by central station service as now…. The Commonwealth Edison Company has among its customers establishments formerly run by some of the largest isolated plants in the city.” A year later, the Electrical Review and Western Electrician wrote that Insull’s customers “now included a large number of great manufacturing and industrial plants.” As more manufacturers joined the system, Insull continued to push down prices. Per-capita sales of electricity skyrocketed in Chicago, rising from about 10 kilowatt-hours in 1899 to nearly 450 kilowatt-hours by 1915.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“as a utility served more customers, it would become more efficient, allowing it to cut the cost of power further and in turn attract even more customers.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“All technological change is generational change.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“To hold inventors liable for the misuse of their inventions is to indict progress itself. That’s”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“Technology is amoral, and inventions are routinely deployed in ways their creators neither intend nor sanction.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“Internet users can seek out interactions with like-minded individuals who have similar values”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“As long as algorithms determine the distribution of profits, they will also determine what gets published. The”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“In the YouTube economy, everyone is free to play, but only a few reap the rewards.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“United States, along with Canada and the United Kingdom, has become a “plutonomy” where “economic growth is powered by, and largely consumed by, the wealthy few.” Economists”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“In programming the World Wide Computer, we will be programming our lives.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“information is a commodity that can be processed by a machine.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“In the long run, the IT department is unlikely to survive, at least not in its familiar form.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“The Web had turned out to be less the new home of Mind than the new home of Business. The”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“the Web transformed the Internet from an intellectual meeting-house into a commercial enterprise.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature… and all watched over by machines of loving grace. That”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“Technology shapes economics, and economics shapes society.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“our longstanding idea of a computer is obsolete.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“Like other factory owners of the time, he was as much in the business of manufacturing energy as manufacturing goods. But”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“the path of technological progress and its human consequences are determined not simply by advances in science and engineering but also, and more decisively, by the influence of technology on the costs of producing and consuming goods and services. A competitive marketplace guarantees that more efficient modes of production and consumption will win out over less efficient ones.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“Rather than allowing technology to control us, Mumford implied, we can control technology—if only we can muster the courage to exert the full power of our free will over the machines we make.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“A hundred years ago, we arrived at such as moment with technologies that extend man's physical powers. We are at another such moment today with technologies that extend our intellectual power”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“We’re still a long way from knowing where our clicks will lead us. But it’s clear that two of the hopes most dear to the Internet optimists—that the Web will create a more bountiful culture and that it will promote greater harmony and understanding—should be treated with skepticism. Cultural impoverishment and social fragmentation seem equally likely outcomes.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

“We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. —John M. Culkin”
― Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google