My Corner of the Web
I just finished the book, Does IT Matter by Nicholas Carr. I read it as research for my forthcoming book on Information Management. In this article, I will give some initial impressions and then lay out a plan for a more complete review. The impressions that I want to begin the examination of this book with are "meta-impressions" or impressions about the overall book and not about specific content. In essence, I am stepping back from the book and trying to put the whole experience into perspective. I have two initial negative impressions and two positive impressions. Let's examine each in detail:
- Singing the Dot-com blues. Many times througout the reading of this book, Mr. Carr makes it clear that this is a response to the dot-com bubble bursting. Is that the right time to make a serious analysis of a subject and to assume you can do so without being overly biased? In other words, it is like making promises of abstinence after a night of excessive partying! Do those "morning-after-promises" mean anything? Are they not overly influenced by the recent excesses? So, why should us readers assume any differently with Mr. Carr's negative opinion on curbing IT after the exorbitant excesses of the dot-com years? The dot-com bubble was primarily motivated by greed and the influx of novice investors jumping online. There is no surprise here - take a feel-good story like the internet, mix in a good economy and a swarm of novice investors with cash burning holes in their pocket and what do you get? Bubble! No different than the more recent real-estate bubble. So, using Mr. Carr's logic should we now swear off buying houses?
Of course, I exaggerate but I still assert that Mr. Carr's timing of this book is suspicious. It can either be seen as a knee-jerk reaction from the Dot-com bubble bursting or worse - a malicious exploitation of the same event to prey upon people's fears.
Lastly, though I will not go through the details in this article (but will later), many of Mr. Carr's arguments could be stronger if he would have waited for recent IT innovations (64-bit computing, widespread broadband adoption, etc.) to play out. - The hyperbole factor. Is my use of hyperbole in the subtitle of this article wrong? Is it fair for me to compare Nicholas Carr to a prudish nun for effect? Well, that would depend on your view of Mr. Carr's title to his book because he uses the same technique. The name of his original article was "IT Doesn't Matter" which was clearly meant to poke the IT hornet's nest with a stick. His book took a slightly tamer approach because it purports to be a more thorough and academic approach than the article. So, even a skimming of the book makes you understand that he is really saying that "IT matters as infrastructure but not to achieving strategic competitive advantage." So, how does this use of hyperbole make you feel about the objective analysis in the book? You can look at it in a few ways - either a) it is harmless self-promotion or b) it portends a bias or c) it was necessary to get people's attention. I lean towards believing it is a combination of (a) and (b); howevever, I do think he could have done a better job at presenting more objective scientific analysis in the book. If you are going to be smarmy, it is prudent to be able to back it up with facts...
- Baby and the bathwater. Given all of the above, I am confident that he is partially right. His assertion that IT is infrastructure is clearly partially right. While I will go into detail later in distinguishing between "infrastructural IT" and "transformational IT" - for now, it should suffice to say that "IT as infrastructure" is an important concept. We are indebted to Mr. Carr for raising our awareness of the commonality between IT and other infrastructure technologies like rail, telegraph and electricity. Additionally, I think that truly understanding "IT as infrastructure" will be very good for the IT industry and the IT profession. In fact, I can think of no better evidence for the need for the Professional Licensing of Software Engineers and legal liability for mission critical software than the arguments presented in this book.
- Careful examination warranted? No better evidence of the importance of examining this book in detail is the lemming-like knee-jerk reaction of many high-technology executives to Mr. Carr's article and book. Who cannot help but laugh at the obvious self-interest at which Steve Balmer of Microsoft asserts that Mr. Carr's article is "Hogwash!". This book certainly deserves a thorough examination.
My plan for reviewing this book is to first review each chapter and write an article on each one. There are seven chapters in the book:
- Technological Transformations.
- Laying Tracks.
- An Almost Perfect Commodity
- Vanishing Advantage
- The Universal Strategy Solvent
- Managing the Money Pit
- A Dream of Wonderful Machines
In addition to reviewing the chapters, I need to figure out a rating scheme (including judgement criteria) for each chapter. After reviewing and rating each chapter, I will then write an overall review of the book. For now, I encourage all technologists and managers to read this book.
Happy New Year!