Apparently Nicholas Carr has now made a book out of his HBR article “IT Doesn’t Matter” that caused such a fuss last year.
InfoWorld’s Chad Dickerson has a nice take on it here.
Beneath all the “IT doesn’t matter” hype, there’s the notion that IT is already a utility and you just plug things in and they work — not true. In my mind, the ubiquity of IT shouldn’t be confused with overall IT stability any more than the ubiquity of banking systems should be confused with making money. In both cases, good management matters more than anything.
Jack McCredie from UC Berkeley wrote a good response to the original article on why IT certainly does matter in higher education.
I argue that academic institutions that are smart and nimble enough to take advantage of advances in information technology will be better able than their peers to compete for great students, faculty, and staff. Successfully incorporating IT into their operational and educational fabric will probably not enable any institution to corner the market on National Merit Scholarship winners or National Science Foundation grants; however, the advantages will be real, and they will matter in the day-to day culture that sets one institution apart from another.
