What is happening to computing today is a revolution, the biggest upheaval since the invention of the PC in the 1970s. But it is not without precedent. It bears a close resemblance to what happened to mechanical power 100 years ago.True. But elsewhere in the article he adds this:
The transformation in the supply of computing promises to have equally sweeping consequences. Software programs already control or mediate not only industry and commerce but entertainment, journalism, education, even politics and national defence. The shock waves produced by a shift in computing technology will thus be intense and far-reaching.I'm not sure that I'd agree with Carr's prediction of the extent of that impact. If anything, SaaS is IT catching up to itself, and to the Three D's -- democratization, decentralization, and distribution -- that blogs, social computing, peer-to-peer file sharing, telecommuting, and other concepts have brought to bear on long-established business models and practices, politics, and pretty much everything else. With disruptive concepts like "the long tail," "the flat world," and "the wisdom of crowds" already ingrained elements of the Web-driven global socio-economic environment, I don't see SaaS as having that much of an impact outside of the software industry itself.
Yes, it will allow devices to become smaller and more mobile by eliminating the need to install software on those devices. And yes, that will have an impact on when, where, and how we use the Web. But that's an incremental change to a landscape that is already familiar to technology consumers (which is to say, damn near everybody in the developed world).
The real issue here is that SaaS is to the software industry -- at least in one respect -- what the MP3 was to the music industry. The software industry will soon be out of the business of selling silver disks. It will be interesting to see if the software industry does a better job of adjusting to this new reality than the music industry.
