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 path-breaking audiobook, 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 royal for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.“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

Master Switch, The

Business & Money

Tim Wu

Biography & History

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

The Attention Merchants: How Our Time and Attention Are Gathered and Sold

Marketing & Sales

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

<p>From the man who coined the term "net neutrality," author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.\nWe live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms -- big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.\nIn The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.</p>

The Curse of Bigness

Atlantic Booka

The Internet Age: on the face of it, an era of unprecedented freedom in both communication and culture. Yet in the past, each major new medium, from telephone to satellite television, has crested on a wave of similar idealistic optimism, before succumbing to the inevitable undertow of industrial consolidation. Every once free and open technology has, in time, become centralized and closed; as corporate power has taken control of the 'master switch.' Today a similar struggle looms over the Internet, and as it increasingly supersedes all other media the stakes have never been higher. Part industrial expose, part examination of freedom of expression, The Master Switch reveals a crucial drama - full of indelible characters - as it has played out over decades in the shadows of global communication.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Atlantic

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 royal for the Internet’s future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.  “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

Atlantic Books - London

Imperios da Comunicacao (Em Portugues do Brasil)

Zahar

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Books by Tim Wu