Nicholas G. Carr

Nicholas Carr (also: Nicholas G. Carr and Nick Carr, born 1959 ) is an American author and business journalist who is particularly concerned with the development of the Internet and the social impact of the digital revolution.

Life

Nicholas Carr studied English and American literature and language at Dartmouth College and Harvard. He was first editor, later (next to Sarah Cliffe ) between 2000 and 2003 chief editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Since 2008 until recently, Carr was a member of the Editorial Board of Advisors of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Carr is a member of the board of the cloud computing project of the World Economic Forum.

He has published, among others, the Guardian and The Times as well as in American newspapers and magazines, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, The New Republic, in the Financial Times and the German weekly Die Zeit. In addition, Carr occurs at conferences and lectures.

Positions

Nicholas Carr represents mostly critical and pessimistic assumptions regarding the impact of digital technology on society.

He is a publicist first emerged with his article " IT does not matter" ( in German, mutatis mutandis, about: " the IT is not the point "), which in May 2003 - so a short time after the bursting of the so-called dot-com bubble - in the Harvard Business Review was published and came out shortly afterwards in expanded form as a book. Carr Commission is of the view that the use of information technology promise over time less and less a strategic competitive advantage for companies because am used at lower costs and better and better availability of IT by its competitors. With the progressive standardization, the production methods and processes among competitors aligned with each other. The biggest mistake one can commit in the use of information technology, consists in spending too much for the company's own IT infrastructure. Seen from the result, it was not worth getting the latest (and thus: the most expensive ) use technology. Carr sees savings primarily in getting rid of unnecessary software updates and the use of open - source software. Anyone who wants to get an idea of ​​the related savings could be as high, the profit margin of a company like Microsoft itself may bear in mind. These theses attended course for an extensive controversy, many of whom still lasting effect.

As a result, Carr worked with the advent of cloud computing. The Internet, which was originally only been a mere distributor network, going through the establishment of the " cloud " itself "is not only a universal computer [ ... ] but also a universal medium ". The computerization have increased productivity, which many jobs were lost. This process will exacerbated by the transition to cloud computing continues. On one hand, Amateurs could now take complicated work in cultural production on your own computer, such as the sound mix for recording or editing photos; on the other hand it has become questionable whether the further expensive cultural goods, such as journalism will continue to be financially viable. "It could turn out that the culture of diversity that created the Internet, but in reality is only a culture of mediocrity ".

In German-speaking Nicholas Carr has become known on the relationship of Internet use and thereby caused change of thinking primarily for his pessimistic estimates. In the essay, published in the journal The Atlantic under the title 2008: " Is Google making us stupid? " ( In German as: " power ( us ) Google stupid " ) was published, and later in an extended version in the book " the Shallows " ( German title :" Who am I when I 'm online ... and what makes my brain as long as the Internet changed our thinking " ), he finds that he, after he had begun about ten years, to read online, as before was no longer able to accommodate longer text. On the one hand is the amount of text that we had to work today, thanks to digital media, much higher than in the 1970s and 1980s, when television was still the dominant medium. But even reading had changed, it had become erratic, and brain research proves that the reading habits impact on the shape of the brain and this alters with its use, by adapting itself. Longer, more contemplative and analytical thought processes and texts would thus always more difficult or even impossible. Behind 'm also a commercial interest, because the more pages click on an user, the more data can a company like Google collect about him, to use in the placement of advertising. In addition, this will the productivity of " knowledge work " ( "knowledge work" ) increased. Carr strikes a pessimistic tone. Ultimately, however, must remain an open question whether this development should be viewed as unfavorable, because even with the invention of printing, there were critics who thought that with the cheaper availability of books would cons associated with that would outweigh the benefits by far.

Reception

Nicholas Carr's theories have been especially noticed by critics of digital media and received many times. So Frank Schirrmacher was referring in his book " Payback" in 2009 to Carr. The levels reached in August 2008, the title of the Atlantic, and asked in turn: " power goofy the Internet " Manfred Spitzer's theses on "Digital Dementia" are with Carr's book, " Who am I when I 'm online ... and what makes my brain as long as been? " associated. Mercedes Bunz was in 2012, the " worried " whether the use of Google " stupid " do, is after trying to discuss them seriously - first in magazines and in the daily press, and later at the table - " ultimately to the adjourned regular meetings " were. It provides Carr in a series with other, quite different, at least pessimistic critics of digitization and holds against them that these were not the device or the Web 2.0 platforms that changed our thinking, but we deal with them.

Awards

• Writer in residence at the University of Berkeley
• 2011: What the Internet Is Doing nonfiction to Our Brains in the category General: nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for the book The Shallows.

Writings (selection )

• Digital Enterprise. How to Reshape Your Business for a Connected World. Boston. Harvard Business School Press. , 2001. ISBN 1-57851-558-0
• Does IT Matter? . Boston. Harvard Business School Press. , 2004. ISBN 1-59139-444-9
• The big switch: the interconnectedness of the world from Edison to Google. The great transformation. Translation from American English by Reinhard Engel. Heidelberg. Addison-Wesley Publishing. , 2009. ISBN 978-3-8266-5508-1
• Who am I when I 'm online ... and what makes my brain long? How the Internet changed our thinking (English: The Shallows: Mind, Memory and Media in the Age of Instant Information ). From the American English by Henning Dedekind. Munich. Blessing Verlag. 2010 ISBN 978-3-89667-428-9 - new edition under the title. Surfing the shallows. What the Internet does to our brain. Munich. Pantheon Publishing. , 2013. ISBN 978-3-570-55205-6
• The rule of the machines. What do we lose if the computer decide for us. In: Sheets for German and international politics.. March 2014 pp. 45-55 (English: All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines In. The Atlantic November 2013 October 23, 2013 Retrieved on 13 February 2014.. . ).