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

Nicholas Carr draws a historical parallel between the development of the electrical grid and the rise of cloud computing. He describes how 20th-century factories dismantled their private steam engines and dynamos once centralized utility plants could transmit electricity through a standardized plug. Carr argues that information technology is undergoing an identical shift, moving from local hardware and software to centralized digital utilities. This transition centralizes economic power, disrupts traditional business models, and alters how human beings process information and interact socially.

This book serves IT professionals, business strategists, and economists who need to understand the structural shift from ownership to subscription models. It explains the departure from internal data centers toward shared infrastructure. Readers gain a framework for analyzing how the virtualization of computing creates new monopolies and changes labor markets. The text provides a clear historical context for current trends in software as a service and the outsourcing of cognitive tasks to large-scale data networks.