The Master Switch - A Must Read!

The Master Switch : the Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu is an interesting and highly valuable read. Framed as an inside-looking-out history of the greatest industries of our day -- from AT&T and the American motion picture studios to the major cable and television networks -- the book details just how some of the leading characters in American business centralized control of each of those industries, identifies those seeking to do the same with the internet and provides detailed reasons why we should care.

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"There is a dark underbelly to the diversity of content and services that the internet has brought us, one that leaves it more vulnerable to centralization, not less. The Internet with its uniquely open design has led to a moment when all other information networks have converged upon it as the one "superhighway," to use the 1990s term.

"While there were once distinct channels of telephony, television, radio, and film, all information forms are now destined to make their way increasingly along the master network that can support virtually any kind of data traffic.

"This tendency, once called "convergence," was universally thought a good thing, but its dangers have now revealed themselves as well. With every sort of political, social, cultural, and economic transaction having to one degree or another now gone digital, this proposes an awesome dependence on a single network, and a no less vital need to preserve its openness from imperial designs." (pg 318) *

From David Sarnoff, Adolph Zukor, and Theodore Vail, to Steve Jobs and 'The Woz,' Google, Ted Turner, the newly recentralised AT&T, and the ever-crafty motion picture studios -- all play key roles in this surprisingly captivating story of the ongoing struggle for control of all things connected.

*Copyright 2010 by Tim Wu. All rights reserved. PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF a division of Random House, Inc.., New York, and in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto