Nicholas Carr on 'The Big Switch'

Nicholas Carr, of IT
Doesn't Matter fame, spoke with Computerworld's
Joyce Carpenter about his new book, The
Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google.

What is this big switch you see coming? I think we're at the early stages
of a fundamental shift in the nature of computing, which is going from something
that people and businesses had to supply locally, through their own machines
and their own installed software, to much more of a utility model where a lot
of the computer functions we depend on are supplied from big, central stations,
big central utilities over the Internet.

It's analogous to what happened to mechanical power 100 years ago, when the
electric utilities changed the nature of that resource and how businesses and
people used it and received it.

How did you come upon the electricity analogy for computing? It was
pretty clear to me that we were in this kind of shift. I'm interested in the
history of technology and had been reading a lot about the technologies of the
Industrial Revolution. It struck me that the kind of radical shift that businesses,
in particular, had to go through when they decided to close down their waterwheels
or steam engines at their factories and trust an outside supplier to provide
this essential resource reflected the kind of upheaval that people feel in computing
when they begin to rely on and trust outside suppliers to supply another essential
resource.

You refer to both electricity and information technologies as general-purpose
technologies. Has computing gained that status? Yes. General-purpose technology
is a term that economists use to describe any technology that can be used for
many, many different purposes. They're very rare, and they're very important
in economic and business history for the simple reason that you can use them
so broadly. I think it's widely acknowledged now that the two most important
general-purpose technologies in history really are electricity and computing.

Processing is done in so many different ways and for so many different purposes.
Is it really as general as you make out? The analogy between electricity
and information technology works at an economic level, pretty well, I think.
When you start looking at a technological level, you see that there are, of
course, major differences, and I'm not arguing that IT is like electricity in
some fundamental technological way.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine