Nicholas Carr's 2003 article, "IT Doesn't Matter," is on pages 191-201 of the course reader. He asserts that as information technology (IT) becomes cheaper and accessible to all, it loses its strategic value to the firm.

To put the article in context, the mid-to-late 1990s produced a frenzy of IT spending that many recognized as a Dot-Com Bubble. The Dot-Coms emerged unharmed by the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, and many true believers in the Dot-Com economy doubled down on their bets of perpetual growth. Those who counseled caution obviously failed to understand that This Time Is Different.

In reality, corporate and government investments for Y2K readiness had pulled about a decade's-worth of IT demand forward into the 1995-1999 period. Dot-Com companies faced a reckoning after the NASDAQ crash in March of 2000. The terror attacks of 9/11 erased any possibility that the surviving Dot-Coms would see a quick rebound of IT demand.

Some persisted in pushing IT spending as a solution to all problems, but CEOs were suddenly skeptical. Carr's article captures this skepticism. His analysis concludes that IT had matured into an infrastructure, and that corporate leaders needed to start treating IT as a source of risk rather than a source of opportunity.

Naturally, many experts on IT strategy disagreed. Their responses to Carr's article appear on pages 202-217 of the reader, followed by Carr's rebuttal on page 218. While a couple responses cling to the idea that "[i]nformation technology has infinite and constantly expanding potential" (Mark S. Lewis) and that "anything is possible with software" (Chris Schlueter Langdon), most of them make a more nuanced argument about how IT is used conferring a strategic advantage.

Most of the disagreement boils down to terminology. Carr used a restrictive definition of IT that encompassed relatively general-purpose hardware and software. The respondents tended to use a much more expansive definition that would more properly be labeled information systems (IS) which includes hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. Of course the two sides had very different views on what "IT" can and can't do!

Explain the difference between IT and IS using as little jargon as possible. Please limit your response to one page (1.5 spaced).