Carr

=Nicholas Carr= Nicholas Carr's web site

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Bio
Nicholas Carr is an example of someone who embraces life-long learning. His formal education is in English, yet what he currently writes about is technology and how our world is effected and shaped by it.He contributes to many important magazines and periodicals such as //Wired, The New York Times Magazine,// and //The Atlantic//. Carr has also written three books and blogs.

Books
He has written three influential books: I have only read excerpts from his books, but I will read them in more detail in the near future. "Influential" is an excellent choice of words for his work; for people in my area of study, they are essential and a different take on many more traditional ways of thinking about technology..
 * //The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains// (2011)
 * //The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google// (2008)
 * //Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage// [[image:NickCarr.jpg align="right" caption="Nicholas Carr (from www.nicholascarr.com)"]](2004).

Articles, Blogs, and Videos
There are several videos on the site: (He is an engaging speaker who speaks with few if any notes and never strings three sentences together with "and" or "uh.")
 * Articles and Interviews on Carr's web site; links to many of Carr's ideas. These cover some of the same issues discussed in his books.
 * //Rough Type,// one of Carr's blogs covering a multitude of topics
 * //Digital Renderings//, Carr's essay blog
 * Information Overload (15:35)
 * [|Big Think Interview with Nicholas Carr] (16:00)
 * [|Cloud computing, at Google's inaugural Atmosphere Conference in London] (31:05)

nicholascarr.com
Carr's web site is effective. There is a lot of information on Carr, his ideas, and his writings. I was somewhat disappointed in the adds he felt he must run on his site to help pay for it, but they are minimal and there are no porno or body enhancement sites. The home page has a large number of quotes from Carr. They are relevant, but somehow self serving. This site is an example of a site with good information but the viewer needs to understand it is a piece of promotion as well.

Ideas
Nicholas Carr looks at the world and how technology effects it and the people in it. I was originally going to say he was not a Luddite, but after reading what the original Luddites were protesting, I'm not as sure he isn't a Luddite in the original sense of the word. The Luddites of the 19th century protested the mechanization of the weaving industry because automating looms was putting the weavers out of work. Carr brings up some of the same points when discussing the internet and how it is diminishing people's cognitive abilities.Carr doesn't go so far as to say the internet should be shut down, merely that the uses of the internet need to be looked at and the users continue to be challenged in other intellectual ways.

In the speech he gave in London to a Google conference I felt missed an important questions, and maybe he discusses it in //Does IT Matter?//, is how much are IT professionals responsible for the hesitancy of organizations to adopt cloud computing? Are IT people overstating security, reliability, and other issues to help preserve their jobs? If cloud computing becomes the model for computing, there will be less need for IT in individual organizations. The technologist could go the way of the fireman on trains. When diesel became the primary fuel for locomotives, there was no need to have a worker in the cab to stoke the fire to produce steam; the unions were so strong at that time, the railroads were not permitted to fire the firemen. The firemen road in the cabs of the trains with little to nothing to do except collect a paycheck. VLC