Cloud computing as new IT paradigm: examining Nicholas Carrs ideas

Remus Titiriga, PhD, Law Professor

The idea behind the cloud computing is the sharing of computing resources across many activities.
An operator may build a huge data centre including tens of thousands of servers and then sells
computing capacity to interested customers. Customers send their tasks through the Internet and
retrieve in the same way the results of calculations. At the end of the month, the operator will charge
the clients to pay only the computing power they have consumed.
The same thing may apply for data storage by giving companies capacities of several thousand
terabytes.
The great public became aware of the new technology through the bestselling book of Nicholas Carr
The Big Switch: rewiring the world from Edison to Google. The switch here stays for the button
linked to the coming out of electrical power in modern life. But the switch means also a change in
computing paradigm of the knowledge economy similar to ancient shift produced by electricity in the
industrial world. Hence the main argument of the author is an analogy between the early
developments of electrical grid system and today's application rooted on internet and cloud
computing.
The first part of the book set the basis of the whole argumentation: an analysis of development of
electric power from 100 years ago and its tremendous social outcome.
In the first chapter Burden's Wheel lays out Carr examines the past position of water power, the
precursor to electricity, and explains what these technologies means for economy. Carr underlines the
economical impact of general purpose technologies (as the energy provider) which are the basis for a
multitude of other economic activities.

Professor of Law, INHA University, 100 Inharo Nam-gu Incheon 402-751, Korea, Republic of

(South Korea), HOME PAGE: http://lawandchallenge.blogspot.com

In the second chapter The Inventor and His Clear Carr reconstitutes the emergence, the
development and adoption of electric power. He emphasizes that electric power had a false start with
Edison's request for power generators of continuous electrical current. Edison saw himself as provider
of a local (every building) electrical power generators and of associated services (maintenance,
installation, etc).
The next chapter Digital Millwork examines the modern history of computing with an analogy
between old client service computing and the ancient continuous electric power generators of
Edison.
However Teslas generators of alternative electrical power replaced those of Edisons. The later
electrical network (allowed by the alternative current) finally displaced the local continuous current
electric generators. Carr considers that internet will accomplish for computing what the dynamos of
Tesla integrated in a grid have achieved in replacing electric local plants with huge electric power
companies.
In this chapter Carr complains about actual IT costs as being too big for what they deliver. The answer
will be in the cloud computation that will bring computing power on demand exactly as the electric
grid gave electric power, when and wherever, was needed.
In chapter 4 Goodbye, Mr. Gates Carr paints the future world of virtual computing where physical
location and devices based on software licensing will not exist anymore (undermining as result the
core business of Microsoft). The comments on this chapter are almost positive in favour of Google
and his business model based on providing services via internet.
In chapter 5: The White City the author moves back to a historical discussion of how electricity
changed people's lives and societies. And again Carr is speculating about the way the switch to the
Internet applications might look.
The second part of the book underlines the hopes but likewise the dangers in this paradigm shift.
The electricity drove many revolutions in the years following the end of XIXth century in
transportation, the middle class development and a new mass culture. Carr considers that the switch
from local to cloud computing will likewise bring seismic shifts in business, technology and culture,
and that the change is on the run.

The chapter World Wide Computer underlines the rampant possibilities of a programmable internet.
This chapter focus on how astonishing will be the world for individuals with infinite information and
computing power available to them. Carr discusses equally the future of corporate computing.
The basic idea is that today's IT will disappear. Until now, if you needed computing power, you
needed to buy servers and install software on them. On the contrary, cloud computing makes the
hardware and software transparent. Computing power becomes a commodity used as the electric
current that we pay to make use of. The equipments that generate it become invisible to the end user.
If the equipment become abstract and the infrastructure consist of thousands of servers, the failure of
one server does not cause any break of service. This mode of working has been cited by experts as the
true reason for the superiority of Google over competitors. Google does not necessarily have the best
search algorithms, but has separate intelligent infrastructure software that give him an unstoppable
competitive advantage.
First of all, many smaller companies will have access to tools once reserved for large undertakings.
Productivity and creativity will therefore increase.
Then, cloud computing will be a step closer to a post-industrial society, in the sense that the client
(users) will buy more servers from a manufacturer. Manufacturers like Dell, HP or IBM will therefore
be faced with clients that buy the servers by the thousands and have huge bargaining power. A price
war will then engage and the computing power will become extremely cheap and accessible.
Tens of thousands of IT jobs on maintenance will be destroyed. However the software development
market will expand. Equally the application software that can use this unexpected power will explode.
The software will increasingly move to the SaaS model (Software as a Service) where software will
be installed on cloud computing and used through the internet. This transition is already under way
(via software such as SalesForce.com and many software packages), but will accelerate.
The chapter From Many to the Few discuss the social impacts of a programmable internet. Here
Carr systematically unveils the negative consequences. Fewer and fewer people will need to work in a
global world of programmable internet but the utopia of equality and local industries of the web will
never arrive. Therefore the author underlines the erosion of the middle class.
The chapter The Great Unbundling describe the move from mass markets to markets of niches. The
chapter also debates the social implications of a web as a mean of creating a tribal and increasingly

sliced world, rather than a unified one. The internet is strengthening the ideas that the user already has
because it allows him to find others with the same ideas. The word wide web is increasingly become a
zone of niches and not a universal awareness space that everybody assumed to arise with the internet.
In the chapter Fighting the Net Carr discusses the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the free flowing
of information and the structural integrity of the net.
In A Spider's Web he addresses the personal privacy issues associated with the web and the
realization that "we live in a world without secrets". This chapter is equally a warning about what it
means to do business where everything is recorded and tracked. He says that "computer systems are
not at their core technologies of emancipation. They are technologies of control." He goes on to point
out that even a decentralized cloud network can be programmed to monitor and control.
The last chapter iGod discuss a futuristic vision of fusion between men and machines. What it is
possible when the human brain can immediately access infinite information and the machine gains
artificial intelligence (apparently this is Googles program)? These are the questions raised but
unanswered in the chapter. As a matter of fact the book ends by saying that we will not know where
IT is going until our children, the first generation to be wired from the beginning become adults.
General evaluation of the book
The main argument is that desktop software is and will be displaced by the Web 2.0 (peer to per and
participative internet) and by the cloud computing. When electricity began its development, many
businesses used local sources for power, including local waterwheels or windmills on their own
property. As the electrical grid developed, businesses were able to get power delivered, from
somewhere else they did not know or really care, as long as it comes. In the computer industry the
same transition is going on; instead of using programs on your PC, more and more businesses are
using Web 2.0 technology to host their critical mission software somewhere else, they do not know
where, or even care about. The advantages of such a transition would be at least economical and the
author cites a source as saying that Googles computation (probably the largest user of cloud
computing throughout its distributed data centres) can do a task at one tenth of the usual cost.
If some aspects are never mentioned (for example the copyright) the author did not fall either in a
triumphalist or utopian vision. Some of his conclusions underline the shortcoming of the new
paradigm: a further decline in print publishing, a reduction of the middle class, and a continuing
erosion of privacy.

But can his core analogy with electric grid be maintained? Electric pour system is a highly regulated
(market) system (from a strategic perspective that it is quite normal). Can the knowledge economy
and its new paradigm of cloud computing be envisioned in the same way? That is a very interesting
point that the author never address. How about the actual trend of decentralised electric power
generators (for example solar panels alimenting electrically autonomous houses)? This new
tendencies may affect the pertinence of a similar paradigm shift to cloud computing.
The issue of privacy can also undermine all the intellectual build up. Inevitably the high computation
power plants of the future will control the data of their clients. And the privacy intrusions might
concern not just lay individuals (that can accommodate with it) but the commercial data, business
plans, commercial secrets, secret inventions or know-how of undertakings.
Is it possible to give all those highly sensible information to a giant and almost unique player as
Google is? Can we trade the efficiency for the lack of independency? The answer seem to be no.
But these issues are likely to incite a debate of the challenges and possible technical or juridical
solutions. The future will decide over the balance between efficiency and privacy, independency and
monopolistic control.
But in general the authors ideas allows each one to understand the profound implication of the cloud
computationrevolution. It is reasonable to agree with him that cloud computing and the pervasive
network will be an essential tool in shaping the future landscape of the knowledge economy and
society.