It was only a matter of time, but now the geeks over at Slashdot have gotten wind of Nick Carr's The Big Switch, and they're not kindly disposed to it.

This is in contrast to some of the excellent, well-reasoned discussion surrounding his also controversial article "IT Doesn't Matter" and you have to wonder if they are proving one of Nick's points. In the book, he cites research suggesting that insular communities with similar views tend to become more radicalized and less tolerant of or open to ideas other than their own over time. Has Slashdot gone down that path in the intervening years?

Speaking to the controversy itself, I believe that the thing that most of the Slashdot commenters are missing is the progression of the technologies. We all see it at some level every day, and yeah, everyone accepts that technology moves fast, but there is an underlying assumption that in fact things stay pretty much the same in the IT field: regardless of the technical advances, programs will be written so badly and with such complexity that translators (today, IT staff) will always be required between the computer and the user. As surely as that assumption has been made during every era of computing, it has slowly been chipped away in the next. Specialized knowledge that is currently required won't always be, just like specialized knowledge that was required in the past isn't now... undoubtedly a group of plug-swapping ENIAC programmers might have had a similar conversation regarding their own indispensability and the learning capabilities of today's so-called techs that are posting on Slashdot.