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

Nicholas Carr

Jan 2009 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

“Magisterial…Draws an elegant and illuminating parallel between the late-19th-century electrification of America and today’s computing world.” —Salon

Hailed as “the most influential book so far on the cloud computing movement” (Christian Science Monitor), The Big Switch makes a simple and profound statement: Computing is turning into a utility, and the effects of this transition will ultimately change society as completely as the advent of cheap electricity did. In a new chapter for this edition that brings the story up-to-date, Nicholas Carr revisits the dramatic new world being conjured from the circuits of the “World Wide Computer.”

Ratings and reviews

Sure, it covers the birth of computing as a utility, but other than that it really doesn't have a purpose. There are some good nuggets in there and it is generally well written, but there are no next steps, no epiphanies. It is a stylized and abridged personal version of a dynamic and ever growing system of systems.

AÀA BOSS NETWORK

AÀA BOSS NETWORK

About the author

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Glass Cage, and Utopia is Creepy. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, and Wired. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife.