ACM TechNews

Q&A: Author Nicholas Carr on the Terrifying Future of Computing

Wired News (12/20/07) Reiss, Spencer

Nicholas Carr's new book, "The Big Switch," examines the emerging "World Wide Computer," or the network of dummy PCs linked to massive server farms in the data cloud. Carr sees the future of computing as troublesome because he anticipates all computers will be linked into essentially a single computer, largely eliminating privacy. Carr says that most people have already made the switch from desktop to cloud computing, with increasing numbers of people using Web applications such as Flickr and Gmail instead of traditional programs on their hard drives, and many people made the switch without even knowing it. "People say they're nervous about storing personal info online, but they do it all the time, sacrificing privacy to save time and money," Carr says. "Companies are no different. The two most popular Web-based business applications right now are for managing payroll and customer accounts--some of the most sensitive information companies have." Carr argues that although computers are a liberating technology, they can also be a controlling technology. He says that "as systems become more centralized--as personal data becomes more exposed and data-mining software grows in sophistication--the interests of control will gain the upper hand. If you're looking to monitor and manipulate people, you couldn't design a better machine." Carr says the scariest thing about the future is not that computers are starting to act more human, but that humans are starting to act more like machines, focusing more on the speed of locating and reading data. "We're transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us," Carr says.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-01/st_qa

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