The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

384 pages

Published May 11, 2010 by Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-307-26993-5

(1 review)

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 …

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.

3 editions

plutonian reviewed The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

Everything old is new again.

4 stars

If you love reading about "enshittification," buckle in tight, because you're gonna LOVE The Cycle.

Tim Wu presents a comprehensive history of the rise and fall of information industries in the U.S., and illustrates again and again how unchecked corporate power strangles innovation and impedes progress at every turn. He illustrates his theory of "The Cycle" (in which open systems consolidate and then choke competition and disruption) with the development of film, radio, television, and telephone industries. (Reading this book will certainly make you want to dig up some dead white guys and punch them in the face.)

Since this book was published in 2010, I was a little worried that it would be frustratingly out of date. It's not; the history is solid, his theories are good. But towards the end I definitely had a sinking feeling in my stomach while reading. Wu proposes that the nature of the …

If you love reading about "enshittification," buckle in tight, because you're gonna LOVE The Cycle.

Tim Wu presents a comprehensive history of the rise and fall of information industries in the U.S., and illustrates again and again how unchecked corporate power strangles innovation and impedes progress at every turn. He illustrates his theory of "The Cycle" (in which open systems consolidate and then choke competition and disruption) with the development of film, radio, television, and telephone industries. (Reading this book will certainly make you want to dig up some dead white guys and punch them in the face.)

Since this book was published in 2010, I was a little worried that it would be frustratingly out of date. It's not; the history is solid, his theories are good. But towards the end I definitely had a sinking feeling in my stomach while reading. Wu proposes that the nature of the internet makes it both vulnerable and resistant to corporate control, and he's hopeful that net neutrality will win the day. He places his hopes in Google and its ideals (yikes), and also on effective government regulation (reading this the week that the Supreme Court gutted the federal government's regulatory powers: double yikes).

At times it's incredibly discouraging to read this book in 2024; it's much harder to muster up any hope that the internet will break free of this cycle. I would love a new edition of this book with an afterword by Wu, written today. The future does not look as bright in the year of our lord 2024.