Book Description
A bold and controversial manifesto on where information technology is headed, how its role in business strategy will dramatically change, and what this all means for business managers and IT suppliers
Does IT Matter provides the first cogent explanation of IT’s dramatically changing business role, its levelling influence on competition, and the practical implications for business managers and IT suppliers.
A convincing manifesto on one of the most important business phenomena of our time, “Does IT Matter?” will play a central role in our ongoing debate about the future of IT.
Customer Reviews:
Written by an author who never managed an IT organization.......2007-05-27
Although Nicholas Carr has some good eye opening arguments, most of it is based on theory, and not practice. As usual, although such arguments are worthy of thought and debate, it should never be taken at its face value as the new paradigm.
For example, Nicholas Carr makes an argument there are huge amount of IT "waste" because of excessive disk capacity and CPU capabilities. People who have worked in IT for any reasonable period of time knows that excess capacity rarely remains wasted, especially when many organizations experience 50%+ growth in disk storage needs every year. The same thing goes for the CPU and memory capacity. Having excessive hardware capacity for the future needs is called "capacity planning" and not a waste. Anyone who has been taken off guard (and paid a dear price with costly downtime) due to lack of disk storage, memory, or CPU horsepower knows the value of having some excessive hardware capacity. Minimizing the risk of critical downtime is hardly a "waste".
Some of Nicholas Carr's argument, admittedly, is at least somewhat, if not mostly, true. For example, he argues that IT, particularly its infrastructure, offers little competitive advantage because IT has become a commodity. This is true of SAN, OS, RDBMS, email, routers, switches, and servers (among others). If one's competitors have better and faster storage, for example, all one needs to do is buy the same storage from the same vendor at the same price to negate that competitive advantage.
Nicholas Carr does not address two important factors enough in the competitive forces of IT:
1)The power of innovation. Although competitive advantage via better hardware is becoming non-existent, a superior code written by a good developer is much more difficult to duplicate. Carr seems to dismiss the idea of innovation in IT since it is a "commodity". This is only partially true.
2)The competitive advantage of having superior IT personnel. The quality of the Knowledge Worker has become a key component, and perhaps the main key component, of competitive forces. In an era where it is increasingly difficult to gain competitive advantage, the quality of a company's Knowledge Worker is becoming more crucial. Despite the increasing commoditization of IT, the quality of IT depends largely on the quality of the IT personnel.
A necessary read and a great overview, but...........2007-04-23
It is always difficult to write books about the interplay of business and technology. If you lean too far in either direction, you fall off the tightrope. Carr does a good job at abstracting and giving the macroeconomical view, but his weakness colaesces in "Managing the Money Pit". The overview approach does not work here, Sir. This is a place where volumes could be written. When should I, as an IT manager make targeted strategic investments, as oppossed to overall upgrades? Should I put on my rose-colored academic glasses and convert my server farms to Linux and outsource all my IT overseas? Generalization of complex issues that face people in this industry could be tough to swallow for some.
On a positive note, the relation of IT to past infrastructure technologies was brilliant. As a reader, I was insatiable when reading the historical similarities of railroads, electrical grids and other innovations of times past. Tying these examples together with those of the modern era to form direct patterns (instead of loose links) would do this book a ton of good. Expanding the "Money Pit" chapter and teaming up with some industry IT veterans to write it would add tremendous value to the reader.
IT is about Distinctiveness.......2006-03-05
You gain an advantage over your competitors by having or doings something that they can't have or do. This means that in the end business profits are based on you ability to differentiate yourself.
As IT becomes more and more a commodity it is only a natural economic fact that its ability to help your business differentiate itself will decrease.
This book is based on sound economic principles. It is not nice or sweet news, but if you are prepared for the coming commodity you will not be disappointed.
So, yes read this book and learn from history.
verbose.......2006-02-24
This is just an article from Harvard Business Review blown up into a book. Get the article reprint and save yourself time and money.
Putting a lid on IT's "irrational exuberance".......2006-01-05
Carr provides a stirring indictment to the belief that IT brings with it the promise of competitive advantage. Instead, he posits that IT is merely a cost of doing business, cut in the same cloth as other innovations that once held a lot of promise like electricity and the railway system. Though no company can ever hope to operate much less compete without the above, its homogeneity and prevalence has somehow blunted its value.
The search for that elusive silver bullet has found CEO's bequeathing so much power to IT that a good number have expected it to rescue bad business plans. Carr mentions specific examples of IT's inability to mask business problems but rather makes them more apparent earlier.
One major point I find hard to believe is that the window of innovation for IT has closed. Though a lot of strides have been made, a lot of work is yet to be done. However, I fear that Carr would be proven prescient even seminal on this particular point in the short term. Though IT people continue to churn out the next line of killer applications, there is a danger that the customers may simply refuse to upgrade or purchase thereby sealing IT's fate as a commodity.
An interesting thought gleaned from the book is that IT (automation) frees people to do far more important tasks. However, what those important tasks are is not clearly defined. Granting that most tasks will be automated, it will lead to more unemployment, a surplus of products (assuming productivity rises because of IT), low prices and profits until the next new thing is discovered that will disrupt the balance once again. But this hasn't happened yet.
Though I don't agree with some of Carr's ideas, I believe it is good to read dissenting opinions on the future of IT.
Book Description
A highly readable survey of the major responsibilities, opportunities and challenges involved in coaching today's athlete. It emphasizes the mental techniques known through the latest research in sport psychology to enhance performance and enjoyment in sports.
Customer Reviews:
Good, concise read.......1999-12-16
This book covers quite a bit and isn't too technical. Many of the suggestions are doable with any level of sport.
Book Description
Many people find themselves dissatisfied with recent linguistic philosophy, and yet know that language has always mattered deeply to philosophy and must in some sense continue to do so. Ian Hacking considers here some dozen case studies in the history of philosophy to show the different ways in which language has been important, and the consequences for the development of the subject. There are chapters on, among others, Hobbes, Berkeley, Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Feyerabend and Davidson. Dr Hacking ends by speculating about the directions in which philosophy and the study of language seem likely to go. The book will provide students with a stimulating, broad survey of problems in the theory of meaning and the development of philosophy, particularly in this century. The topics treated in the philosophy of language are among the central, current concerns of philosophers, and the historical framework makes it possible to introduce concretely and intelligibly all the main theoretical issues.
Customer Reviews:
Not an Introductory Book.......2004-10-31
As with all of Hacking's books, it is well written and researched. However, it is not nearly as simple to understand as some of his other writings. I have taken courses one course each in logic, philosophy of psychiatry, and linguistics, and have done a good deal of reading on my own. That did NOT suffice. There is much discussion of early modern philosophy. I would not recommend this book unless you have some background in Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, etc., as well as some knowledge of twentieth century contemporary analytic philosophy.
This book is just barely out of the reach of someone who is interested and an avid reader. Something along the lines of a minor in philosophy is needed.
Average customer rating:
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Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?
Institute of Medicine (U. S.) ,
Theresa M. Wizemann , and
Mary Lou Pardue
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Why Does Literature Matter? (Cornell Classics in Philosophy)
Frank B. Farrell
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
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Book Description
"Literature matters because . . . it allows for experiences important to the living out of a sophisticated and satisfying human life; because other arenas of culture cannot provide them to the same degree; and because a relatively small number of texts carry out these functions in so exceptional a manner that we owe it to past and future members of the species to keep such texts alive in our cultural traditions."—from Chapter One
Frank B. Farrell defends a rich conception of the space of literature that retains its links to issues of self-formation and metaphysics and does not let that space collapse into just another reflection of social space. He maintains that recent literary theory has badly misread findings in the philosophy of language and the theory of subjectivity. That misreading, Farrell says, has tended to endorse ways of understanding literature that make one question why it matters at all. Farrell here opposes some recent theoretical trends and, through a mix of philosophical and literary studies, tells us why in his view literature does truly matter.
Among the writers Farrell discusses are John Ashbery, Samuel Beckett, Amit Chaudhuri, Cormac McCarthy, James Merrill, Marcel Proust, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, W. G. Sebald, and John Updike. The philosophers important to his arguments include Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, and Bernard Williams; G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein play roles as well. Among the literary theorists addressed are Stephen Greenblatt, Paul de Man, and Marjorie Perloff. In addition to his close readings of literary, philosophical, and critical texts, Farrell considers cultural studies and postcolonial studies more generally and speculates on the possible contributions of object-relations theory in psychology to the study of literature.
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Does Class Matter?: Colonial Capital and Workers' Resistance in Bengal, 1890 - 1937
Subho Basu
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Focusing primarily on the politics of jute workers in Bengal, this study explores the interaction between workers' politics, nationalist movements, and the colonial state at various levels in the period between 1890 and 1937.
Book Description
This is a series of essays representing philosopher Alan Watts's most recent thinking on the astonishing problems of man's relations to his material environment. The basic theme is that civilized man confuses symbol with reality, his ways of describing and measuring the world with the world itself, and thus puts himself into the absurd situation of preferring money to wealth and eating the menu instead of the dinner.
Thus, with his attention locked upon numbers and concepts, man is increasingly unconscious of nature and of his total dependence upon air, water, plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. He has been hallucinated into the notion that the so-called "external" world is a cluster of "objects" separate from himself, that he "encounters" it, that he comes into it instead of out of it. Consequently, our species is fouling its own nest and is in imminent danger of self-obliteration.
Here, a philosopher whose works have been mainly concerned with mysticism and Oriental philosophy gets down to the "nitty-gritty" problems of economics, technology, clothing, cooking, and housing.
Customer Reviews:
Yes, it matters and its important.......2004-02-27
Alan Watts is one of my favorite philosophers. His wisdom is timeless, and his views refreshing in this age of mass media hype and overplayed political propaganda. Does it Matter? That is an important question for everyone to ask themselves. I'm not going to list here the many topics covered in this volume, and certainly I'm not equal to Watts in trying to explain it. The book is worth owning even for his writing about children. One can get a whole new perspective on the Columbine shootings, for example, by reading what Watts said about children several decades before. Columbine wasn't a surprise. It's a great book for those who take time to think about life and the real way of the world.
The Radical Angry Sixties Redux.......2002-02-13
If you think this book is about getting your priorities straight and considering what really matters, don't bother. This book is alot of junk ideas from the sixties. I threw the book in the garbage so that no other unsuspecting person would get it. What a disappointment.
Easily one of my favorites in my Watts library..........2000-02-22
It is subtitled "Essays on Man's Relationship to Materiality"...and my copy perhaps is almost ready for the Smithsonian. So much for my relationship with my materiality, eh? Well, I'm still learning. This book is one of his most accessible collections, his writing style here is so light and readable that it's clear that he is getting a kick out of his own whimsical turning of phrases. The words, the symbols, the images, the numbers in which we define reality are NOT reality and according to Watts, we confuse our descriptive world with what is really going on, thus we are distanced and numbed to real situations in the real world...we become blind to nature, we fail to connect to the living vibrations. These essays--I know, yet more descriptives--are designed for us to recognize the problem. (Money is not wealth. We are not our clothes. Food is not the packaging it is placed in.) These essays tell us ways we can connect to the cosmic consciousness...so we can avoid self destruction. One of the best essays is the short piece on Zen scholar DT Suzuki in which, I find, has the best line about both Suzuki and the Alan Watts of this text...it is "as if he had seen the Ultimate Joke and as if, out of compassion for those who had not, he were refraining from laughing out loud." Well, that is almost the way I have often been described, like I've told a joke that few people get...Anyway one of Watt's best, it's a pity is no longer in catalogue....
This is 'applied Watts' at its best........1999-12-24
Alan Watts is somehow able to turn upside down our most basic assumptions and, by doing so, make more sense of the world. "Does It Matter" is a small collection of essays about Western man's relationship to everyday material things (e.g. food, clothing, money). Watts convincingly shakes us out of rutted thinking. With humor, irreverance, sincerity, and clear writing, he articulates profound ideas without resorting to obscure argument. A theme that runs through the essays is our tendency to confuse symbols with the material things to which they refer(desiring the menu more than the food). I get the feeling while reading these essays that the author is comfortable enough in his own search for truth to enjoy sharing it.
Inspired by Matter.......1999-11-28
I particularly love Alan Watts' play on words in his titles, in which this case he does so well. A common phrase 'Does It Matter' is the subject in which the author explores and expresses his ideas of materialism in a materialistic age (more so now than in his own time - appearingly). Discussing his own perceptions in which the way things could be in order to get full advantage of living and being free from oneself as well as anything material. Yet, also expressing the notion that materialism, in all its greed and desires, can be viewed as spiritual and indeed be part of every persons awakening to real life.
Book Description
Highly topical and controversial examination of the education system.
"Education, education, education" has become an obsession for politicians and the public alike. It is seen as an economic panacea: an engine for growth and prosperity. But is there a link between increased spending on higher education and economic growth? Professor Alison Wolf takes a critical look at successive governments' education policy and challenges many of the tenets of received wisdom: there are no economic reasons for spending more on higher education in order to stimulate growth. The conclusion of this devastating book is that a large proportion of the billions poured into vocational training and university provision might be better spent on teaching the basics at primary school.
Customer Reviews:
Essential reading about higher education.......2006-07-25
The conventional wisdom about higher education goes like this. It is imperative for government to get more and more students into and through college because we are now in a "knowledge economy" and unless we have enough highly skilled workers, we will fall behind. Almost no one in politics or the education establishment ever questions those beliefs. It is widely accepted that increasing the amount of formal education is the means by which states or nations that are relatively poor can lift themselves up economically.
Professor Alison Wolf of King's College in London challenges the conventional wisdom in this extraordinarily insightful book. Actually, it's more than a challenge -- it's a thorough refutation. She demonstrates that the "knowledge economy" does not significantly change the broad contours of the labor force, that a high public "investment" in formal higher education is neither necessary nor sufficient for strong economic growth; and that the best educational policy to follow would be to ensure that young students learn well the academic basics (which many now don't, even if they graduate from college).
Does Education Matter? is absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in educational policy.
Book Description
In this revision of his classic book Richard Whittington challenges the basic assumptions of management orthodoxy. By applying four basic theoretical approaches of strategy-making to a series of key strategic issues, Whittington demonstrates the practical implications of different theories with many examples. Students are then challenged to critically evaluate their own personal approach to strategy-making in practice. The new edition is fully updated to cover the latest issues in strategy including expanded coverage of the resource-based and knowledge-based views of the firm, and utilises new examples from the international, service and `ebusiness' sectors.
Customer Reviews:
Superb Strategy Book.......2001-06-26
It only 130 pages of text. I have read a few chapters and find it absolutely mind blowing. Its power packed. I am sure the remaining chapters will be as impactful as well.
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