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3 out of 5
by
Nicholas
from
Charlottesville, VA | Feb 18, 2009
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 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."
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4 out of 5
by
Noel
from
London, The United Kingdom | Jan 14, 2010
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 and the invention of the electricity grid to ease us into the idea that technology is changing the way we work, consume, socialise and even think - again. This context does make that idea oddly more palatable: in a way, we've already allowed technology to do this to us on a slower, perhaps less invasive scale, and it's been (shrug) ok, even good for us. He is careful to note the differences in the difficulties and benefits that accrue from each of these paradigm shifts, though.
I think what I liked most about this book compared to hyped-up accounts of how the www. is changing human interaction and commerce is that Carr isn't handing us a big pet theory decorated with punditry - he's grounding the facts, analysis and opinion about a tech phenomenon in history and giving it a sense of relevance instead of (merely) spin. The result for me is a feeling of having learned something instead of being sold it.
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4 out of 5
by
Grace
from
Delmar, NY | May 11, 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 family cohesion and the social aspects of housework. Carr than applies the lessons learned during the electrification transformation to the computer revolution and, in particular, the Internet.
Issues such as energy, privacy, the personalization of search engines, terrorism, and the possibility of Artificial Intelligence created by the information gleaned from our search keywords, keystrokes, and purchases are all discussed in this compact text. At just over 230 pages, the author gives a concise exploration of many of the changes happening to society because of the "World Wide Computer." Many of the topics could easily morph into its own book, but Carr does a great job at giving each a fair amount of text and moving on.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the impact the Internet and the information age will have on our way of life.
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3 out of 5
by
Uwe
from
The United States | Jul 25, 2010
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 on every software upgrade or new Web 2.0 platform.
One major criticism: Carr should have discussed the social implications of this technology shift. Instead, he focused more on financial and sociological implications. If you're looking for that, read Jason Lanier's "You're not a gadget."
If you're in the computing/digital industry: Skim the book, there are a lot of good nuggets there. If you're living/working outside this world: Read it.
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4 out of 5
by
Stephanie
from
Portland, OR | Jul 14, 2009
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 at the scale of what could be coming with the internet as utility. As a librarian, it was disheartening to see him trace the downfall of journalism as an example where the internet has changed things (and not necessarily for the better); that we can expect to see less in-depth, investigative reporting and more user-generated content as news features. Will this mean the end of authoritative sources, or simply that, even more than now, better information will be available only to those who can afford it?
As a side note, he also makes a good case for studying math, which is being used to do fascinating (and frightening) things on the internet regarding identifying and tracking people (even in "anonymous" settings). Time to embrace the reality that my idea of privacy is a sad delusion (and I'm only 10 years behind Scott McNealy's pronouncement "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.").