The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

Nicholas G. Carr

W. W. Norton & Company, 2008 - Computers - 278 pages

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 computer systems and tapping into rich services delivered over the Internet. This time it’s computing that’s turning into a utility. The shift is already remaking the computer industry, bringing new competitors like Google to the fore and threatening traditional stalwarts like Microsoft and Dell. But the effects will reach much further. Cheap computing will ultimately change society as profoundly as cheap electricity did. In this lucid and compelling book, Nicholas Carr weaves together history, economics, and technology to explain why computing is changing—and what it means for all of us.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - jontseng - LibraryThing

Brilliant exposition of cloud computing - the comparison to electricity really is a killer analogy. Unfortunately the later sections feel a little like a rehash of previously printed journalism.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - BakuDreamer - LibraryThing

You could skip part one. Now the ' cloud ' is really starting to arrive. ( I still have serious reservations about it )

Contents

• A Doorway in Boston: 1
• One Machine: 7
• Burdens Wheel: 9
• The Inventor and His Clerk: 25
• Digital Millwork: 45
• Goodbye Mr Gates: 63
• The White City: 85
• Living in the Cloud: 105
• World Wide Computer: 107
• From the Many to the Few: 127
• The Great Unbundling: 149
• Fighting the Net: 169
• A Spiders Web: 185
• iGod: 211
• Flame and Filament: 231
• Notes: 235
• Acknowledgments: 261
• Index: 263

About the author

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and The Glass Cage, among other books. Former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, he has written for The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Wired. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
• Author: Nicholas G. Carr
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
• ISBN: 0393062287, 9780393062281
• Length: 278 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Information Theory