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| The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google | 
| Author: Nicholas Carr
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.89
You Save: $10.06 (39%)
Buy New/Used from $14.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (33 reviews)
Sales Rank: 10168
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 276
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1
ISBN: 0393062287
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4834
EAN: 9780393062281
ASIN: 0393062287
Publication Date: January 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 One of my favorites April 27, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book will go down as one of my favorites. I loved all the history of electricity that Carr writes about and how well he ties it into the modern computer age. He doesn't stop there and goes on to tie our current computer age into the future of computers.
Very well written and interesting from start to finish.
A must read April 25, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
If it is true, it is something that needs to be read by anyone interested in this field.
 Thought provoking book April 5, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book illustrates the dangers of both ignoring technology and innovation as well as the challenges of adopting those innovations. The book is an easy and fast read.
Interesting History plus Future Insight March 21, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book begins with an interesting history of the impact of electricity and then shifts to providing insight into where we're headed with Information Technology.
It's a quick, easy and worthwhile read.
It amazes me just how much has changed since my grandparents time, how rapidly things are changing today and how much faster they will be changing for my grandchildren. Will my grandchildren indeed be forced to decide to remain as humans as we know them or become post humans? Carr touches on this subject in his last chapter titled "iGod".
For insight into the coming era of post humans, read "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil or just wait for the movie with the same title to be released later this year.
Very insightful and an excellent read March 12, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Nick Carr is the author who made a big splash a few years ago with the controversial book Does IT Matter? CIOs and computer geeks around the world were irritated by Carr's suggestion that IT no longer offers organizations a competitive advantage. Interesting concept, but I never bought into it either.
Don't let that turn you off from Carr's latest book, The Big Switch. I finished reading it earlier this week and found it to be a very interesting and well-researched work. Carr's premise this time is that the world of computers has much in common with the history and evolution of electricity. The Big Switch taught me a lot about development of that wall outlet we take for granted; although that might sound like a boring subject, Carr makes it engaging and really caused the light in my head to go on (no pun intended) with his analogy to the computer industry.
Have you ever had e-mail problems at your office? Maybe the main server goes down or some other unusual event occurs, causing you to lose your e-mail/web connection. It happens just about everywhere at some point. But have you noticed how reliable a service like Gmail is? I'm pretty sure that in the 5+ years I've been using Gmail I've never run into a service outage. Ever.
That's one of the points in The Big Switch: Just like when companies who used to generate their own power eventually switched over to central power stations as they started to appear, many of the services provided by your company's IT department (e-mail, storage, etc.) should be instead be outsourced and centralized for greater efficiencies and reliability.
It all comes down to having your organization focus on doing what it does best and outsourcing the rest. Sure, you might have a great IT department today, but can it really compete with the service levels, reliability and cost structure of some of the better outsource solutions? Even if this doesn't result in a dramatic, wholesale shift in the long term, it's clear that it makes a lot of sense for select applications and will continue to become a more viable approach going forward. Hmmm...maybe Carr was right all along and IT really doesn't matter!
Very good book. Highly recommended.
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