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Review
Praise for Tim Wu’s THE MASTER SWITCH
“An explosive history that makes it clear how the information business became what it is today. Important reading.”
—Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and Free: How
Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing; editor of Wired Magazine
“Wu’s book is both a masterful media history and an outline for the future of the digital age. The Master Switch brilliantly describes the never-ending tension between open and closed media, as it has effected everything from the printing press to the web, and details ways society might be able to prevent the disastrous closing down of digital freedoms currently threatening the open internet.”
—Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization and Cognitive
Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
“Every now and then a book changes the way we understand the world. The Master Switch is such an achievement; it is a rigorous, imaginative and enthralling history of the Twentieth Century struggle among utopian innovators, profit-maximizing monopolists, and their often-hapless regulators. Wu has convincingly reinterpreted our media past, and by doing so, he has illuminated the risks to open media and Internet-enabled innovation that confront us in the present.”
—Steve Coll, President, New American Foundation and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Ghost Wars: The Secret
History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
“A masterpiece.”
—Lawrence Lessig, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics and Professor of Law, Harvard
University
“Ranging from the early days of Theodore Vail’s AT&T to the current battle between Google and Apple, Tim Wu’s work is a must read for those who want to know about the future of the Internet. The Master Switch is brilliant, with a distinctive voice that comes through on every page.”
—Josh Silverman, CEO, Skype
“A free and open Internet is not a given. Indeed, corporate interests are working feverishly to seize control of it. Drawing on history, The Master Switch shows how this could easily happen and why we are at risk of losing the freedom we now take for granted. A must-read for all Americans who want to remain the ones deciding what they can read, watch, and listen to.”
—Arianna Huffington
“The Master Switch [is] my pick for economics book of the year.”
—Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
“[A]n intellectually ambitious history of modern communications.... Wu makes a good case [and] his most thought-provoking argument about the future may actually be the past.”
—David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review
“[T]here’s sharp insight and a surprising fact on nearly every page of Wu’s masterful survey.... entertaining.”
—Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe
“[A] brilliant exploration of the oscillations of communications technologies between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ from the early days of telephone up through Hollywood and broadcast television up to the Internet era.”
—Michael Noer, Forbes
“[O]riginal, insightful...Wu skillfully evocates the early years of telephony.... he provides a compelling reminder of the monopolist instincts of communications and media companies.”
—Steven Pearlstein, Washington Monthly
“[M]asterful.... fascinating.... a superstar in the telecommunications world.... Wu has a way of presenting complex and important concepts in a clear and understandable way....eminently readable....a wealth of....fabulous anecdotes....a warning that we ignore at our peril.”
—Art Brodsky, Huffington Post
“[G]roundbreaking.... The Master Switch offers powerful lessons from the past for the future of the Internet.”
—Li Gong, Nature
“[T]imely.... a PW Best Book of 2010.... The Master Switch is a fascinating look at the cycle of technology and media development over the past century, and implications for the future.”
—Andrew Richard Albanese, Publisher’s Weekly
“Wu…artfully charts a single story in which economic power consistently trumps public good, with the Google of today being the latest ‘master switch’ that channels communication….Eye-opening reading, with implications for just about anyone who uses that utility, which means just about everyone.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Wu’s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity...in the information age.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review and ‘pick of the week’)
“Eye-opening business history.... Wu is an exemplary writer...able to draw readers into his stories with engaging details.”
—Library Journal
“[A]n essential look at the directions that personal computing could be headed depending on which policies and worldviews come to dominate control over the Internet.”
—David Siegfried, Booklist (starred review)
“The Master Switch....a brilliant explanation and history....is as fascinating, wide-ranging, and, ultimately, inspiring book about communications policy and the information industries as you could hope to find.... Wu’s great strength is in the breadth of his scholarship an din his ability to use humor, clear language, and innovative arguments to connect diverse ideas.... Wu is that rare animal, an accomplished scholar who can write about complex ideas in ways that are accessible to all. And the ideas he’s covering are as important as any in our ideological marketplace today.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Book Description
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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Same as it ever was,
This review is from: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Paperback)
Every new communications technology disrupts the previous corporate regimes and threatens to transform the world into an information and artistic utopia -- until the technology is co-opted or suppressed by corporations. Wu lays out how it happened with radio, film and television and shows you how if you think it's different with the Internet, you'd better think again.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A breath of fresh air for media history,
By
This review is from: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Hardcover)
Media people are apt to ignore media history and focus on the present and the future. They are also apt to speak and write in a sort of argot which can be incomprehensible to the outsider.Tim Wu is a professor of law at New York's Columbia University and his book comes as a refreshingly useful contribution, not only for the general reader but for the think tanks which are trying to guide the great media organizations into an uncertain future. The book covers several electrical/electronic communications media (the telephone, radio, film, television, the internet) from an evolutionary point of view. The "invention" of each medium is evoked vividly: for example, Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call to his assistant Watson in the next room, and John Logie Baird with his flickery 30-line picture of a tailor's dummy. The book's main themes however are non-technical, namely business and economics and above all, corporate power. If it were not for the need to keep the book reasonably short, a consideration of print as a medium would also have been instructive. Print is the oldest medium and it is still viable although fundamentally different from the electronic media. In "The Master Switch", Prof.Wu seeks to draw a parallel between the different media in a kind of evolutionary theory which starts out with an invention, goes on to an "open" (free-for-all) state and then culminates in the domination of the industry by one or two large organizations. This evolutionary approach is attractive to the person who likes a neat formula that would fit into a sound bite. However there are notable exceptions, for example in the UK. The early development of broadcast radio (and later television) was closely controlled by the government through the Post Office and the BBC, although the latter was not strictly a government body. The monopoly control by the BBC was broken up as late as the 1950s; more recently the radio and television broadcasting industries have fragmented further. In America, the three great television networks are shadows of what they were, due to competition from specialty channels - and of course from DVDs, video on demand, etc. In the parallel area of electronic manufacturing, the dominant position of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) ended in the 1980s. An alternative media model to Prof.Wu's evolutionary theory is one that is familiar to chemists: namely the concept of dynamic equilibrium. According to this, a system will adjust itself according to changes in external conditions; a chemical equilibrium is not something static but it can shift in response to conditions such as temperature and pressure. For the media, external conditions may include political factors (capitalism versus socialism), economic factors (boom versus recession) and above all, technical innovation. Prof.Wu is right to stress the importance of the ideas of the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) on the role of innovation and the fear of innovation by large organizations because it "rocks the boat". For many years the film industry was afraid of television; today, the television industry is afraid of the internet which attracts younger and better-educated sectors of the population. To conclude; although I have reservations about this book, I recommend it as a stimulus for media policy makers and as a lucid exposition for the lay reader. Dare I suggest that it might form the basis of a TV documentary series?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (84 customer reviews) 76 of 80 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant and Informative,
By William Polm - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
Warning: This is not light reading. The book is well-written but is not designed as entertainment. If, however, you are concerned about the Internet and potentially where it might go in the near future, or more specifically, how it might wind up controlled, this book will be an interesting and informative read. Important too because communication and information dissemination are vital to the freedom of us all.Columbia University Professor Tim Wu takes us on an in-depth tour of the history of the communication empires of telephone, radio, television, and now the Internet. Wu's analyses and conclusions are both brilliant as well as at times somewhat surprising. Every page gives evidence of Wu's thorough research, careful thinking and insights that went into the writing of this fine work. The internet has become part of the lives of almost everyone, with its freeing and empowering presence; in fact in important ways it has become indispensable. A not-too-surprising worry might be that the federal government may someday try to control it, not so overwhelmingly as does the government of China of course, but the possibility is there. What Wu so sagatiously points out is that that threat of control could just as easily, or actually more easily, come from the private sector, because in fact the existence of the internet and its smooth functioning are dependent, not on the government, but private enterprise. A different kind of monopoly looms ahead of us as a distinct danger, and this present information age presents new policy and regulation challenges. One hopes that the right government officials at the federal level take heed to this awesomely researched book. If you would like to understand more accurately recent decades as well as the present time the huge corporations that have in the past but also could one of these days control the ways and means of communication, by all means give this worthy work a read. Highly recommended. 38 of 42 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A complex, complete and compelling story of business,
By Mark P. McDonald - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
The Master Switch is part history, business theory and technology presented in a clear and enjoyable read. This is neither a business book, nor a history book, nor a novel but it has the best elements of all three. Some advice for the reader, be prepared to read a book about business information and technology this is deep, complex, expansive and thoroughly enjoyable.Wu demonstrates throughout the book his ability to research and capture the historical events that led to the world we have today and present them more like James Michener than a dry recitation. The details and descriptions led me to feel like I was reading a historical novel more than a business book. Yet all of the conversation revolves round issues of information, technology and business ownership of it. Wu demonstrates his business thinking through the book and research findings. This is a business book as it discusses how information and new technologies often start out as an explosion of small companies that coalesce into a few dominate firms that then often explode into smaller more innovative companies. Those ideas, the decisions and actions behind them are the context that gives the business history context. The Master Switch is a rare combination of history, theory and technology. People looking to read the book from one of these perspectives will either be delighted or deeply disappointed. As a history, the book is a delight as I learned things I never knew before. As a business book, one with a very clear argument, sequential prose and an explicit `bottom line' this book suffers because it meanders through the history parts. Readers looking for a business book should reset their expectations and get the Master Switch. Reset their expectations from the perspective that rather than loading your brain with `programmed' messages, it may be better to get a broader perspective that will let you think through these critical issues. Setting your expectation to read something enjoyable, informative and comprehensive and you will not be disappointed. 30 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Incredible History of Information Technology,
By Veil_Lord - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
Unless you're very young, you have memory of the "Dark Ages" of technology. Yes, there was a time before the Internet...even a time before the ancient 14 kbs modem. I know it's hard for us to believe, but you used to have to be there if somebody was calling AND you didn't know who it was until you picked up the phone! The answering machine could have been available in the 1950s, but why didn't they come out until a few decades ago?The book has interesting points on technology cycles, which I'll get into in a moment, but first I'd like to congratulate the author on doing such a great job of giving a background history lesson. The topic helps because the history of information empires is every bit as interesting as the rise of military empires. It's all about strategies, "bloody" battles, and luck. It's just the weapons used that differ. Still, most of us have seen even exciting history made boring by poor writing. Mr. Wu keeps things interesting by giving the personal reasons for certain decisions and the circumstances leading to them, not just a bunch of dry dates. Some of the history discussed I was familiar with, but a lot of it was brand new to me. Several ideas presented on the cycles were thought provoking. Most of us are conditioned to immediately think monopoly = bad, but the point of view of the monopolists helps explain why society allowed them to exist. For example, before modern telephone infrastructure existed it almost took a gigantic AT&T to have the drive to force to link up every person to a phone line; while their methods of dealing with opposition were at times abhorrent, they still succeeded in using the monopoly's advantages (economies of scale, no duplication of research by different companies, steady income, etc.) to do a great deal of good. Bell Labs not only researched phone related technologies for the company but also provided resources and advancements in entirely unrelated areas. On the other hand, all was not altruistic. The same advantages that helped it expand and provide service also stifled progress as the monopoly jealously guarded itself against competitors and devoured or squashed possible competitors. They succeeded in connecting nearly everybody for the common good, even rural farms that likely would have been unconnected far longer because of greater costs per user in small population areas. However, those who are old enough will remember when there was only one choice of phone and it was an AT&T phone only. Once AT&T was broken up, we saw tremendous advances in technology and cost benefits to customers. The point being, things aren't purely black and white. The issues of information control and free speech were also fascinating. To me the most interesting was censorship in Hollywood. It's a lesson in unintended consequences. The big studios' very "monopoly" allowed them to succumb to rules of conduct that had married couples depicted sleeping in separate beds for years. In that case rules came from the private sector in the form of religious groups threatening boycotts. There too you see a dichotomy. On one hand, the threat was private individuals in a sense voting with their money and what could be more democratic than voting? On the other hand though, people who didn't agree with those rules had their ability to watch uncensored materials taken away from them in the name of somebody else's view of the public good. It's this kind of struggle for balance we see over and over and over again with the advent of new technologies. I love reading about history and watching documentaries. The adage "History repeats itself." is shown to be true time after time. It's funny how we all think we're so unique, doing things for the first time, but looking back (in some form) most everything's been done before. From the phones, to radio, to the Internet, you can see how the cycle of inventor becomes a wide open free-for-all becomes a tightly controlled industry, and eventually is usurped by some new idea from the outside that changes the rules of the game. It's all one big cycle of progress. Now if only I could figure out what the next major cycle will be, I'd be a very rich man... |
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