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

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

books:

The Big Switch: Re...

	The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google Nicholas Carr W. W. Norton, 2008 - 276 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Fascinating and Informative

This is the first book I have EVER "pre-ordered" in my life and what an appropriate one to do that with!

I read through the entire book over the Christmas holiday and was well-versed in it concepts before I started seeing stories in the mainstream media.

I found the author's historical explanations, arguements and conclusions well thought-out and organized. Although I do not agree with all of his suppositions I do give the author credit for the logical, organized and detailed way he describes the "re-wiring" of the world.

This book is HIGHLY recommended for anyone in any emerging tech business and for the masses interested in the "shift" that is taking place with the world wide computer.

for more information click here

The Big Switch

I very much enjoyed this read. The author takes you through the history of the switch to an electrical grid (which we all are now totally dependant on) and compares that switch to what is going on with the Internet. A few interesting points include:
The current set of changes in the Internet involve small users being able to use tremendous amounts of memory on servers of large Internet companies like Google and Yahoo - for free.
The business model for becoming a massive Internet site is to get users who use your site to supply the information or value, like Wikipedia is doing.
It gets a bit scarey when he talks about how little privacy we really have on the Internet and the idea that some are trying to develope the Internet into artificial intelligence. If technology and computers are your thing, you will enjoy this book.

for more information click here

A pretty good book, with some serious flaws

This is a pretty good book, but by turns interesting and annoying. Carr sketches the history of the rise of the big electric utilities in the early 20th century, then predicts that "utility computing" will similarly displace inhouse corporate IT facilities in the early 21st century, just as companies stopped generating their own electricity way back then.

The historical review is nicely done -- I learned, for instance, that General Electric was once Edison General Electric -- and Carr is on to the reason why companies adopt new technology: it's cheaper, more convenient and/or the competition has already adopted it. The annoyances start when he starts prognosticating. As Yogi Berra once observed, "the trouble with predicting the future is that it is very hard." It looks like Carr read everyone else's Internet/computing predictions, mixed them up a bit, and regurgitated.

OK, I'm being a bit hard on him. Where Carr knows something about an industry -- publishing, for instance -- he has some sharp observations on the migration of newspapers online, and the consequent unbundling of the paper package you buy at the corner for a dollar. For other stuff, he's so scattershot, you'd be you'd be better off to read some of the original critics and prophets -- Carr has nothing new to add, and ends up confusing the reader (and probably himself).

So: read the history, the economics, and the publishing stuff, and skim or skip the rest -- that's my advice.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7

products you might be interested in