It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry–from the telephone to radio to film–once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web–the entire flow of American information–come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"?
Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today’s great information powers–Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T–Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. He shows how a battle royale for Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out
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Review
A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year
“Brilliant.”
—Forbes
“Thought-provoking. . . . An intellectually ambitious history of modern communications.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating, balanced, and rigorous—a tour de force.”
—The New York Review of Books
“Entertaining. . . . There’s a sharp insight and a surprising fact on nearly every page of Wu’s masterful survey.”
—The Boston Globe
“Unexpectedly fascinating. . . . A substantial and well-written account of the five major communications industries that have shaped the world as we know it: telephony, radio, movies, television and the Internet. . . . The economy and common sense of The Master Switch . . . makes it valuable to the non-wonk wondering how we got where we are today, and where we might be headed next.”
—Salon
“Engaging. . . . Wu presents a powerful case. . . . His scholarly command of the past century of communications innovation is prodigious.”
—The Plain Dealer
“My pick for economics book of the year.”
—Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
“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 and Free, and editor of Wired magazine
“A brilliant explanation and history. . . . As fascinating, wide-ranging, and, ultimately, inspiring book about communications policy and the information industries as you could hope to find. . . . 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
“Groundbreaking. . . . Offers powerful lessons from the past for the future of the Internet.”
—Nature
“Original, insightful. . . . Wu provides a compelling reminder of the monopolist instincts of communications and media companies.”
—The Washington Monthly
“Masterful. . . . Eminently readable. . . . A superstar in the telecommunications world . . . Wu has a way of presenting complex and important concepts in a clear and understandable way.”
—Art Brodsky, The Huffington Post
“Wu is the rare writer capable of exhuming history and also interpreting current affairs. In this profound and important book, he excels at both.”
—New Scientist
“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
“As a history lesson for anyone interested in how innovations move from inventors’ garages and laboratories to our living rooms, The Master Switch is a good read, but it is its relevance to the evolution of the Internet that makes it an important book.”
—Times Higher Education Supplement
“Trenchant and provocative. . . . In vivid and often depressing detail, Wu describes how the true inventors and innovators of information technology have been destroyed by their self-aggrandizing counterparts in the executive offices.”
—Toronto Star
“A free and open Internet is not a given. Indeed, corporate interests are working feverishly to seize control of it. Drawing on history, Wu 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
“An ambitious history of the communications industries in the 20th century. . . . [Full of] great stories, and Wu tells them expertly.”
—The Guardian (London)
“The Master Switch is a provocative thesis on where the Internet has come from and where it is headed. It will interest technology enthusiasts and all who value a vibrant media market.”
—The Futurist
“Wu’s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity . . . in the information age.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate and professor at Columbia University, currently serving as Senior Advisor to the United States Federal Trade Commission. In 2006, he was recognized as one of fifty leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in the following year, 01238 magazine listed him as one of Harvard’s one hundred most influential graduates. He writes for Slate, where he won the Lowell Thomas gold medal for travel journalism, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Forbes.
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Customer Reviews
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?
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.
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.
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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