meganboler.net » Geert Lovink

The Big Switch

kelly| May 27, 2008 5:09 pm

Geert Lovink has a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Big Switch:

The Big Switch can be summarized in one sentence: the
shift from in-house computer systems to ‘cloud computing’.

Instead of storing applications on each individual PC, will we
soon have everything store in central data warehouses. Such data
centres are not entire new. What’s emerging is the enormous scale in
which companies like Google are actively anticipating the future
migration of (corporate) IT systems to a few global hubs.

The Big Switch poses all sorts of interesting questions for those
activists, researchers and artists who prefer to work independently.
Ever since we got access to the Internet, in 1993, it has been issue
whether or not to build autonomous infrastructures, or to virtual
hosting from somewhere, usually in the USA.

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