Quick Review: “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires”

I finished reading “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by Timothy Wu. Here’s my short review in more than 140 characters.

Timothy Wu describes how, historically, information industries have tended to cycle from the freedom and openness that follows a disruptive invention to monopoly. About two thirds of the book are devoted to retelling the history of four such industries: Telephone, radio, movies, television. These are intriguing and eye-opening stories: How Hollywood started out as a bunch of “IP pirates”; how the FCC came about and what they were up to; how the Bell System delayed technologies like magnetic storage media and the answering machine for decades; etc.

Then he continues with the Internet, from its decentralized beginnings as ARPANET, to the AOL era, all the way to Apple, Google, and Net Neutrality (and why it is that the iPad fits the monopolistic agenda so well).
Having learned about the monopolistic powers of the Bell System (AT&T and Verizon rising from the ashes), of cable companies, and of media conglomerates, it’s hard to see a bright future for freedom and openness on the Internet.

Wu makes the case for Net Neutrality, and with all the context that the book provides, it is a compelling argument.

Borrowing from what Jonathan Lethem said about Larry Lessig: Timothy Wu is “the best source if you want to get radicalized in a hurry.”

Longer review at Salon.com (by Laura Miller)