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 ― 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