Carr: Innovation in technology

What's really interesting to me about utility computing or cloud computing today is that in fact it's more advanced in the home and among individuals than it is in the corporations. All of Web 2.0 is all about utility or cloud computing. It's about supplying applications and data from central data stations over the network. I think what we've seen is that people naturally gravitate to that model because very few of us want to be the amateur computer technician at home installing software, trouble-shooting software. So this new model where you just launch your web browser and you go onto your net and get the applications and the data you want, is just a much simpler, much easier model. Also most of the stuff is served up for free, which of course is another big advantage to individuals. So this is kind of a turnabout in the recent history of IT. It used to be, if you wanted to see the cutting edge of IT, you'd look at what a big company was doing. Today the big companies are lagging behind this round of innovation. And if you want to look at the cutting edge, go into somebody's house or going into a university dormitory and see how individuals are using their PCs.