I recently got to a book that’s been in my queue since it came out: Nick Carr’s The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google. Carr’s the writer who became infamous in corporate IT circles with an article in the Harvard Business Review called “IT Doesn’t Matter.” The article suggested that information technology was becoming less a competitive advantage and more a commodity to any business–which is correct. Nonetheless, his analysis spawned a furious wave of rebuttals from indignant CIOs and their supporters, as if he’d instead suggested that companies should do away with IT entirely. My thought at the time: thou dost protest too much.
Carr’s latest work likens the broad changes currently underway in computing to the evolution of electricity, … Read More