Commentary: Legal Currents: Cloud Computing and the Electrical Grid, Part 1

Summary

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In his book, The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr compares the democratization of electricity to the transformation that is now occurring in computing. He suggests that the history of the production and distribution of electricity directly parallels that which is occurring in computing today. Just like electricity, which was once a resource privately owned and produced by large businesses for their own use and then later became supplied to the masses by public utilities, so too is the processing of information becoming a utility.

The similarities between these two phenomena, electricity and computing, are what makes this comparison so appealing. The greatest similarity is that both need not be produced locally, but rather can be delivered to the end user from any location. Likewise, both innovations -- electricity and computing -- have inarguably changed the way that we live, and each have altered the framework of our culture on a fundamental level. Finally, each was shaped by similar economic forces driven by the very essence of the product being delivered, whether electricity or computing power. In other words, the unique nature of each product and the increased demand for access to it necessarily affected its method of delivery.

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Extract

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Commentary: Legal Currents: Cloud Computing and the Electrical Grid, Part 1

Of course, as Carr concedes, it's not a perfect analogy and there are a number of important conceptual differences between information technology and electricity. Nevertheless, the similarities betwe...

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