The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr is a new book about how the IT department does not matter. What the book really represents is hunk of wasted paper chalked full of inaccuracies without any real backing. To be honest I’ve only read the first chapter and cannot read any further.
The book starts out with a story in the prologue about how the author met with some people in Boston who showed him that IT could be a utility. It asserted that this was his idea from some previous book he wrote. The story itself was boring and meaningless. It didn’t grab my attention nor was there any good information to keep me reading.
Hoping that the prologue was just something that would not give a grasp on the rest of the book I continued reading to see where this was going. The author asserts that there is this new there is a new technology that would allow the entire IT department to be outsourced. I don’t understand, how this is a new technology? Companies have been outsourcing this department for over ten years now. The Carr does not explain himself in any fashion to prove his theory.
The next problem I saw was the order in which content was presented. For example, the author mentions placing an order on Amazon’s site and doing so on dial up services. The very next paragraph it talks about the spread of broadband and how it has changed everything. Amazon did not become popular until broadband was in use. Most people did not order anything online until after they had broadband. People would go into work and order items online due to the fact they had broadband at work.
The final straw for me was when the author mentioned Napster. The book states that Napster was created by a college dropout and that it started Web 2.0. Napster was started by Shawn Fanning while he was attending college. He later dropped out after the success of this software. The software was still in the first dotcom bubble. The technology might have shown people how to create the services we use today; but it did not start web 2.0.
The author clearly does not know technology and should not be writing about it. I’ve only read the first chapter of this book and will not read any more; it’s worthless to me. The book first section of this book is boring and filled with inaccuracies, it is like a bad business blog trying to write about technology – so bad its almost humorous.
