| The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires |  | Author: Tim Wu
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 113,110
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
ISBN: 0307269930
Dewey Decimal Number: 384.041
EAN: 9780307269935
ASIN: 0307269930
Publication Date: November 2, 2010 (In 53 Days)
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Product Description
A secret history of the industrial wars behind the rise and fall of the twentieth century’s great information empires—Hollywood, the broadcast networks, and AT&T—asking one big question: Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information?
Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become, eventually, the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate. Every once free and open technology was in time centralized and closed, a huge corporate power taking control of the “master switch.” Today, as a similar struggle looms over the Internet, increasingly the pipeline of all other media, the stakes have never been higher. To be decided: who gets heard, and what kind of country we live in.
Part industrial exposé, part meditation on the nature of freedom of expression, part battle cry to save the Internet’s best features, The Master Switch brings to light a crucial drama—rife with indelible characters and stories—heretofore played out over decades in the shadows of our national life.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Brilliant and Informative August 26, 2010
William Polm (Southern California, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
The Internet Community Will NOT Accept A Master. September 2, 2010
R. A. Barricklow (Las Vegas NV USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are those who want to control the money/I care not what puppet is place upon the throne of England to rule the Empire,...the man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I Control the money supply. - Baron Nathan mayor Rothchild. The control of information is no less ambitious.
There are those who have controlled the flow of information and want to continue to control that medium. The internet is in their crosshairs, and they have, without exception, hit every target medium of communication there has been to date.This then, has become the author's preoccupation: those who seek to control information/in the past, present and tomorrow...
In Part 1 he traces the genesis of cultural and communication empires, in what he terms the first turn of the cycle. History has shown that the oscillation of information industries between open and closed is a typical phenomenon that Tim Wu has termed: the Cycle. He shows how each of the early twentieth century's new information industries(telephony, radio, and film) evolved from a novel invention.
In Part 11 he focuses on the consolidation of information empires, often with state support, and the consequences for the vitality of free expression and innovation.
In Part 111 he examines the ways in which the sranglehold of information monopolies were broken after decades.
In Part IV he shows how the size & scale of the information giants led to a new generation of information.
In Part V he looks toward the ultimate question: will the Cycle of history repeat itself. This internet revolution, which we are part of, is so explosive that no one can see where it would lead. Will the Cycle close or will the people prevail with an internet that is in the community's interest. In today's world of privitization, where the Public has become enemy #1, where the mantra has become: socialize the cost/privitize the profits/the fat lady has not as yet sung.
The author likens the outcome , almost like the weather, the flow of information defines the basic tenor of our times, the ambience in which things happen, and ultimately, it will depend upon the character of our society.
So, as Fred Freindly, onetime CBS News president, made clear, before any question of free speech can be addressed, comes the question/Who Controls The Master Switch?
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!!!!!!
P.S. Those wishing to keep up on the issue of net neutrality should google:
Free Press Media Reform Daily & sign up.
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