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

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W. W. Norton & Company, Jan 19, 2009 - Computers - 304 pages

“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.”

 

Contents

A Doorway in Boston
1
One Machine
7
Living in the Cloud
105
Flame and Filament
231
Acknowledgments
261
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About the author (2009)

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.

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