The Big Switch by business/technology writer Nick talks about the big changes that the Internet is bringing to all aspects of our lives. As that is a topic at the heart of this blog and our quest to free the world from the shackles of the matrix, I recently purchased and read the book.


I don't recommend the book. If you are looking for a book that really shows how the world will be rewired, I highly recommend Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy, which you can read online for free here. If you are a business person looking for something that helps you understand, in detail, how to create profitable business models in this new environment, I strongly recommend Net Worth and Out of the Box by John Hagel. John is too smart for his own good and thus his books are difficult to read, but well worth it for business people; he is, in my opinion, the brightest mind on Internet business strategy, and by a fairly wide margin.

And that is essentially why I don't recommend The Big Switch; it doesn't add much to what we already know. There is some stuff about Google and the semantic web, but nothing that I found to be particularly insightful, and in my opinion, nothing that people who read Internet business blogs and sites like Techmeme will find to be particularly revelatory. Carr also makes references terrorism and the government's "war on terror" (aka the war on freedom) and how the Internet plays into that. Unfortunately, Carr fails to note that 9/11 is a classic example of false-flag terrorism, which makes his analysis completely off the mark, as the analysis lacks the appropriate context. This also suggests a serious lack of quality research, as even a simple Google search for 9/11 yields multiple links to 9/11 Truth sites on the front page.

Here are some other book reviews for The Big Switch:

People Over Process » The Big Switch - Book Review
Blogspotting Book Review : Nicholas Carr's Big Switch - BusinessWeek
The Register: Nick Carr's Big Switch
Book Review : Nicholas Carr's "The Big Switch : Rewiring the World ...
Book Review : The Big Switch
Book Review : The Big Switch