The master switch : the rise and fall of information empires / Tim Wu.
Publisher: London : Atlantic, 2012Edition: Pbk. edDescription: 368 p. ill.; 20 cm001: 14208ISBN: 1848879865; 9781848879867Subject(s): Information | The Internet | Technology | Telecommunication -- History | Information technology -- HistoryDDC classification: 384.041 WUTItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 384.041 WUT (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 2 | Available | 113965 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Part industrial expose, part examination of freedom of expression, The Master Switch reveals the decades of power play in the shadows of global communication and how it relates to the Internet today.
Previous ed.: New York : Alfred A. Knopf ; London : Atlantic, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
In this eye-opening business history, Wu (Columbia Law Sch.) examines the evolution of media industries, such as film, radio, cable, telephone, and information, with Apple, AT&T, and Google among the major companies discussed. Readers will recognize that current events impacting the information environment are eerily reminiscent of past ones, especially plans affecting the open and free Internet infrastructure. Wu is an exemplary writer because he is able to draw readers into his stories with engaging details. He also here provides an economic analysis of the cyclical nature of the organization and size of firms. Relying on economic theories, Wu advises against government involvement, because it will only interfere with marketplace events. VERDICT Readers should be knowledgeable about the theories of important economists, such as Joseph Schumpeter, and have an economic background in the characteristics of corporate structures, such as monopolies and oligopolies, to make the best use of this book. Recommended for fans of Wu's Who Controls the Internet? and for those interested in the media infrastructure.-Caroline Geck, Newark Public Schs., NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium-the "master switch." Wu chronicles the turning points of the century's information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. He advocates "not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach" that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy-those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access-and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a "Separations Principle" would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu's engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity-and necessary deregulation-in the information age. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.CHOICE Review
Wu (Columbia Univ.), a recognized authority on electronic media, investigates whether the Internet will follow the same historical cycle as have other information technologies--from open to closed, from decentralized to centralized. In a compelling writing style, Wu recounts the histories of telegraphy, telephony, radio, film, television, and finally the Internet. He provides intriguing portraits of key individuals, from inventors and innovators to empire builders, who eventually, often with the assistance of government regulators, centralize and gain control of each technology. Wu describes how Schumpeter's process of creative destruction can be blunted by business and legal strategies that hold disruptive technologies at bay. He urges adoption of a constitutional approach based on a "Separations Principle" to promote openness and decentralization. This approach requires the enforcement of antidiscrimination or common carriage rules, a prohibition on vertical mergers (so that content creators and disseminators remain separate), and the inculcation of an industry ethic that stigmatizes "site blocking, content discrimination and censorship, broadly defined." Wu believes the sacrifice of quality and cost savings this approach likely entails is warranted by increased innovation and greater economic and political freedom. See related, Eli Noam's Media Ownership and Concentration in America (CH, May'10, 47-5144). Summing Up; Highly recommended. General readers; students at all levels; researchers; professionals. R. C. Singleton University of Puget SoundBooklist Review
*Starred Review* A veteran of Silicon Valley and professor at Columbia University, Wu is an author and policy advocate best known for coining the term net neutrality. Although the Internet has created a world of openness and access unprecedented in human history, Wu is quick to point out that the early phases of telephony, film, and radio offered similar opportunities for the hobbyist, inventor, and creative individual, only to be centralized and controlled by corporate interests, monopolized, broken into smaller entities, and then reconsolidated. Wu calls this the Cycle, and nowhere is it more exemplary than in the telecommunications industry. The question Wu raises is whether the Internet is different, or whether we are merely in the early open phase of a technology that is to be usurped and controlled by profiteering interests. Central in the power struggle is the difference between the way Apple Computer and Google treat content, with Apple attempting to control the user experience with slick products while Google endeavors to democratize content, giving the user choice and openness. This is an essential look at the directions that personal computing could be headed depending on which policies and worldviews come to dominate control over the Internet.--Siegfried, David Copyright 2010 BooklistKirkus Book Review
Powerful forces are afoot to take control of the Internetfor profit, of course. It's happened before, writes Slate contributor Wu (Copyright and Communications/Columbia Univ.; co-author: Who Controls the Internet?, 2006), and the corporations have won just about every time.Take Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, "a professor and an amateur inventor, with little taste for business." More at home in the lab than the boardroom, Bell had backers who knew their corporate chicanery, such that the telephone, the child of many fathers, was soon in the hands of a monopoly, ATT, that endured for more than a century. In the spirit of Schumpeterian "creative destruction," one of those investors, who had a bone to pick with the telegraph companyanother monopolysaw the telephone as a means to kill the earlier technology, and so it was. Radio, too, emerged from many inventors, another example of the simultaneity of innovation. In the 1920s, writes Wu, radio "was a two-way medium accessible to almost any hobbyist," and private individuals and small businesses alike started radio stations as quickly as they set up blogs today. Trying to get a radio license today is a matter of considerable cost and bureaucratic negotiation, and of course it is illegal to broadcast without that licenseanother win for the corporations, which use these gatekeeping mechanisms to keep competition out. Examining one communication technology after another, Wu, coiner of the term "net neutrality," 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. Given that Google has recently been in negotiations with Verizon to take a public utilitythe Internetever more tightly into private hands, that story is timely.Eye-opening reading, with implications for just about anyone who uses that utility, which means just about everyone.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.