The Master Switch By Tim Wu [PDF, ePub, Mobi]

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

"Thought-provoking.... An intellectually ambitious history of modern communications."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Entertaining.... There’s a sharp insight and a surprising fact on nearly every page of Wu’s masterful survey."
--The Boston Globe

"Engaging.... Wu presents a powerful case.... His scholarly command of the past century of communications innovation is prodigious."
--The Plain Dealer

"Original, insightful.... Wu provides a compelling reminder of the monopolist instincts of communications and media companies."
--The Washington Monthly

"An ambitious history of the communications industries in the 20th century.... [Full of] great stories, and Wu tells them expertly."
--The Guardian (London)

"Wu’s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity... in the information age."
--Publishers Weekly

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate and professor at Columbia University, currently serving as Senior Advisor to the United States Federal Trade Commission. In 2006, he was recognized as one of fifty leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in the following year, 01238 magazine listed him as one of Harvard’s one hundred most influential graduates. He writes for Slate, where he won the Lowell Thomas gold medal for travel journalism, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Forbes.

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