The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to GoogleA 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. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - jontseng - LibraryThingBrilliant 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. Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - BakuDreamer - LibraryThingYou could skip part one. Now the ' cloud ' is really starting to arrive. ( I still have serious reservations about it ) Read full review
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 |
The Great Unbundling | 149 |
Fighting the Net | 169 |
A Spiders Web | 185 |
iGod | 211 |
Flame and Filament | 231 |
Notes | 235 |
Acknowledgments | 261 |
| 263 | |
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Common terms and phrases
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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 |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |