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"My article has gotten a lot of attention. It certainly seems to have touched a nerve," says Nicholas Carr, describing, in his understated way, the ferocious reaction that followed the publication of his nine page article, entitled 'IT Doesn't Matter', in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

In fact, there has probably never been anything like it in the long and illustrious history of the influential and often controversial Harvard Business Review. Certainly, Carr concurs, none of the award winning articles that he edited during the five or six years he spent there as a senior editor seems to have triggered such strong, even emotional, reactions - and from such senior, influential people.

After all, which other business writer can claim that his or her article provoked critical reactions from the likes of Bill Gates (chairman, Microsoft), Craig Barrett (CEO, Intel), the collective research heads of the Gartner Group, top professors from Harvard Business School, the chief scientist of Xerox ...and dozens if not hundreds of luminaries and commentators in the IT business (including Information Age - see 'On the death of IT strategy', July 2003).

In a few cases, the reaction has been more than merely critical. Paul Strassmann, executive advisor to NASA and former CIO of the US Department of Defense, said the article was "mis-timed and abortive". George Colony, head of Forrester Research, said it was "one of the great inanities of 2003". Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said it was "hogwash". Information Week described the article as "dangerous".

All this, from just one article - an article that is academic in tone, well-argued and supported by historical comparisons throughout, and that has a simple thesis that many people surely agree with. The central proposition is that IT is now ubiquitous, with the result that individual organisations can no longer expect it to deliver competitive advantage. Rather, as Carr is now doubly keen to emphasise, "my argument is that the benefits [from IT] should be broadly shared."

Because of this, Carr argues that organisations should treat IT like a utility, or a commodity, and concentrate on controlling costs and reducing complexity. And, he adds, they should be followers, not leaders, and they should focus on their vulnerabilities, not on new opportunities. Again, he says to his critics, "I certainly agree that IT will [usually] lead to productivity gains."

Not everyone will agree with Carr. But why has the reaction been so strong? Carr has several explanations, not least of which is that, while many experts have engaged in the debate, some others have merely reacted to the title. And, of course, he agrees that some executives working in IT - including CIOs - may have felt threatened. After all, Carr states unequivocally that budgetary constraints on IT should be tight.

But more than this, he believes that there is also an "ideologicial side" to the debate. "There is a sense that, in many parts of the IT industry, economic laws and rules don't really apply, and that the IT industry will never grow up," he says. To those who think like that, his is an unwelcome voice.

Of course, for Carr, there is a big personal premium to having become, almost overnight, a mover and an influencer, an intellectual pariah in certain quarters and something of a champion in others. After his article appeared, several CIOs in the US said they might now have to justify their level of spending to their boards.

Carr's notoriety has also brought him valuable profile; he recently debated the issues, on stage, with Scott McNealy of Sun, he has a string of speaking engagements, and, there is a book due out shortly, more circumspectly titled, Does IT matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage. Carr says the book will develop his ideas further and put in them historical context. He has not softened his stance in the face of all the opposition, he stresses.

Carr is, above all, a business writer, and appears almost nonplussed by all the fuss he has caused. His ideas, he said, came out of his work on columns for the now defunct new economy weekly, the Industry Standard, and later for HBR. Then, he says, he noticed how many companies were pursuing innovation for its own sake, without thinking through the strategic implications. And, as a business writer with a deep interest in history, he noticed how often technological benefits eventually spread out evenly, becoming part of a shared infrastructure.

"I had an intellectual interest in the subject. I had no guru-making agenda," he stresses.