But when it comes to our minds, Nicholas Carr argues that our obsession with connection has a cost.

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Similarly, Nicholas Carr cites Martin Heidegger for having seen, in the mid-fifties, that new technologies would break the meditational space on which Western wisdoms depend.

NEWYORKER: The Information

Turns out that author Nicholas Carr misinterpreted the data, which he wrote showed that companies with the best financial performance were among those spending least on IT.

CNN: Does IT matter? CEOs and CIOs sound off

Early June will see the publication of Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, and Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

FORBES: Commentary

Earlier this year, at the Milken Global Conference, I had a fascinating discussion with Nicholas Carr, a renowned author and thought leader investigating how technology is impacting the way we think.

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And it is no longer just information that overloads us, which is what Toffler wrote about and has recently been described by Maggie Jackson in Distracted and Nicholas Carr in The Shallows.

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Sun's announcement marks the information technology industry's latest step toward "utility computing, " a grid system in which companies pipe in data processing and storage from faraway server farms, says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, a book on utility computing published earlier this week.

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In fact, argues Nicholas Carr, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of the new book The Big Switch, those Web applications are signs of a fundamental change, a shift from the desktop to the Web that could redefine computing--and Google's business model.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In his latest book, tech pundit Nicholas Carr put a name on a trend that's transforming information technology: As the world becomes more networked, he points out, computing power is undergoing "the Big Switch, " moving off of desktops and into massive data centers, where it's cheaper and more efficient.

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Nolan has a point when it comes to obviousness. (Keller even seems to admit it toward the end of the piece.) His column would be an excellent precursor, for example, to a Nicholas Carr article or book, had those two things not already been published three years ago and last year, respectively.

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