Photograph by Opto When the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published “IT Doesn’t Matter” in May 2003, the point was to start an argument, or, as they say in the more genteel world of academia, a debate. The provocative title of the article and its timing — at the tail end of a long slump in technology spending — ensured that a dustup would ensue.

The resulting debate has been impassioned and often revealing, and is still going on. For those who may have missed it or might welcome a reminder, the central point of the essay, written by Nicholas G. Carr, then editor at large of HBR and now a consultant and author, was that there is nothing all that special about information technology (IT). He declared that information technology is inevitably going the way of the railroads, the telegraph, and electricity, which all became, in economic terms, just ordinary factors of production, or “commodity inputs.” “From a strategic standpoint, they became invisible; they no longer mattered,” Mr. “That is exactly what is happening to information technology today.” The reaction was swift.

Within weeks, Mr. Carr was branded a heretic by many technologists, consultants, and — especially — computer industry executives. Intel’s Craig Barrett, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, IBM’s Sam Palmisano, and others felt compelled to weigh in with varying degrees of fervor to reassure corporate customers. Their message: Don’t listen to this guy. Keep the faith in IT’s power to deliver productivity gains, cost savings, and competitive advantage. And the reaction continued. HBR got so many responses that it set aside a portion of its Web site to accommodate them, and Mr.

Carr kept the controversy bubbling on his own Web site. He became a traveling celebrity of sorts, defending his stance in forums across the country, from the Harvard Club in New York City to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, where he traded verbal jabs with Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy. The article became fodder for countless columns in newspapers, business magazines, and trade journals. Bara No Sabaku Drama Cd Wiki more. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I contributed to the phenomenon. I did not know Mr. Carr before his article was published, but HBR had sent me an advance copy of the manifesto, which I quoted in a long Sunday business piece for the New York Times on the maturing of the IT industry.