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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%)
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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:
 The History of Power Generation February 13, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
After reading the book, the summation or description provided by Amazon above captures the core of the author's message. The first part of the book drags you through the beginnings of the electric power generation industry and how it grew and developed into what we have today. The author then uses this as an analogy to support his view that "utility computing" will replace corporate datacenters we have today. This long history wasn't necessary for the point to be delivered.
One thing this is frequently skipped over is hardware as a service and it's implementation and role that it plays in the growth and success of SaaS.
The author touched on some of the social and business impacts he sees and the impact that it has had on anyone that creates content that can be digitized. The rest of the book covered various observations about the impact of the Internet on society and business that can be found in just about any other Web 2.0 book out there.
This book continues the trend of taking a magazine article that touches the touches on the epicenter of Internet 2.0 that is so popular. "Everything is Miscellaneous" is another example. My opinion is that this book should have stayed as a magazine article. I don't recommend it unless it's the only Web 2.0 book you read.
 A pretty good book, with some serious flaws February 2, 2008
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
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
 The Big Switch January 25, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Fascinating and Informative January 21, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
The End of the IT Department? January 13, 2008
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
Nicholas Carr tells us that a great transformation taking place: The Big Switch, as it were. Businesses are switching from inhouse IT departments to network services or, as the he calls it, utility computing. This switch is similar to what happened with electricity a hundred years ago. At that time companies produced their own electricity by operating their own generators. This, however, was enormously inefficient and expensive. Eventually companies saw the wisdom of using a giant centralized grid operated by companies like Edison and Westinghouse.
Utility computing has been talked about for years; people like Larry Ellison have been promoting it for a long time. Some companies are slowly making the transition, but most still buy their own computing equipment, their own software, and still hire legions of IT personnel. Carr argues that this will all change once everyone moves to the computing grid. Computing, he claims, is now a commodity like electricity was at the beginning of the last century. It is no longer cost effective for companies to try and differentiate themselves by doing all their IT services inhouse when everything is available on the Internet.
The social consequences of this transition will be huge. Some IT companies will prosper and others will suffer or become irrelevant. Companies like Microsoft and Intel will be losers since they will be selling less hardware and software. Others like Google, the archetypal utility computing company, will prosper. Google operates the largest data centers in the world and offers a wide variety of software apps that private companies no longer need to develop on their own. Carr believes that the Microsoft's client/server modal is on the way out.
As companies move to the grid their IT departments will be drastically downsized. Carr goes as far as foreseeing "just one person sitting at a PC and issuing simple commands over the Internet to a distant utility." He writes that even Internet companies such as Craigslist, YouTube, and Flickr operate with minimal staff since they are making maximum use of the grid.
The fate of content producers such as journalists, photographers, reviewers, and editors is even worse. (Read also The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Unabridged) by Andrew Keen.) Professionals are being replaced by hobbyists, who, by the way, don't make any money. The professional will have to find other work to support was is now their hobby.
Carr's vision of the future may be excessively bleak. No doubt the losers of the utility age will find their new niche just as electrical workers did in the last century. This book will be helpful to the IT professionals who are trying to reposition themselves as IT departments decline.
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