upcarta
  • Sign In
  • Sign Up
  • Explore
  • Search

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

  • Book
  • 2010
  • #Technology
Tim Wu
@TimWu
(Author)
www.goodreads.com
Edition
4.5/5 356 ratings
Edition Kindle Audiobook Paperback Audio cd
See on Goodreads
3.87/5 6.6k ratings
4 Recommenders
4 Mentions
1 Ask
In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless mono... Show More

In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.

As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.

Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.

Part industrial exposé, part meditation on what freedom requires in the information age, The Master Switch is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future.

(From Goodreads)

Show Less

Number of Pages: 384

ISBN: 0307269930

ISBN-13: 9780307269935

Recommend
Post
Save
Complete
Collect
Mentions
See All
Andrew Chen @AndrewChen · Aug 24, 2018
  • Post
  • From Twitter
Now starting the section now these information empires eventually got dismantled, by the internet, cable, and the government antitrust efforts on the 1950s! Awesome book so far
Brian Armstrong @BrianArmstrong · Jan 8, 2022
  • Post
  • From Twitter
I do agree that all networks tend toward centralization over time. Great book on this
Yohan John @dryohanjohn · Aug 26, 2022
  • Post
  • From Twitter
Well I hadn't really worked it out, but I was thinking about how energy was commiditized, then information... and now attention is a commodity too. Tim Wu's book on this is excellent:
Westie @WestieCapital · Mar 31, 2023
  • Answered to Best book you’ve read in 2023?
  • From Twitter
Asks
See All
  • Mike Dudas
    • Ask
    Best book you’ve read in 2023?
    77 answers
  • upcarta ©2025
  • Home
  • About
  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • @upcarta