The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry â from the telephone to radio to film â 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 â the entire flow of American information â come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of âthe master switchâ? Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of todayâs great information powers â Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T â Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. He shows how a battle royal for the Internetâs future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out. âFascinating, balanced, and rigorousâa tour de force.â â The New York Review of Books âEntertaining. . . . Thereâs a sharp insight and a surprising fact on nearly every page of Wuâs masterful survey.â â The Boston Globe