Switching on the Internet

Carr begins with a detailed narrative of how the production and dissemination of electricity was transformed over the decades, ever since Thomas Edison set up the Edison Electric Light Company. Edison intended that companies would buy from him the licensed technology and equipment to set up their in-house, private generating plants that would light up homes, offices and factories only within the vicinity. It did not occur to him to spur the demand and achieve efficiency and economy of scale by aiming for a large consolidated, shared electricity network through a national grid, powered by massive central plants. This now-familiar scenario of electricity as a utility would later be realised by Samuel Insull, Edison's former secretary, who set up the Commonwealth Edison company to supply electricity cheaply, using enormous and powerful steam turbines.

Just as electricity irreversibly changed the way we live and work, so has the World Wide Computer, as Carr calls it, the shared Internet network fed to users through a PC and a modem. Electricity allowed many businesses to flourish through improved productivity and efficiency and also made other industries redundant, such as icehouses which stored and distributed chunks of ice for food preservation. Mechanisation in factories perpetuated the assembly-line process and reduced the demand for skilled tradespeople and craftsmen. Consumerism, for diverse household appliances, cars, entertainment, etc., took root. In the IT age, newspaper companies are losing advertising and circulation ground to news websites and blogs. One is more likely to purchase a book online rather than visit a bookstore for some old-fashioned browsing. The second part of the book describes the impact of the Internet revolution, with some startling revelations like the balkanization of politically-minded users through the spread and intensification of ideology over the Internet, and the breaking down of privacy controls.

The common accessibility provided by the World Wide Computer has helped slowly turn IT into an utility that is programmable by the general public. This is best played out in e-commerce. Consider Craigslist, the free classifieds site. It costs little for site's founder to run the website, and he has millions of unpaid employees