In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.
As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.
Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.
Part industrial exposé, part meditation on what freedom requires in the information age, The Master Switch is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future.
0 有用 weihu 2016-08-13 18:15:50
看看
0 有用 激动如胖大海 2020-05-28 21:59:12
Tim Wu真的是个很吸粉的学者。干货就不说了,写论文的遣词造句都能从他的文章和书里学到很多。这本书调研广泛、通熟易懂、逻辑自洽,这么受欢迎不是没有道理。严格从法学特别是反垄断法而言,有点simplistic and overreaching; but as the work of a leading Brandeist, 另当别论
0 有用 傲宇 2023-12-18 16:10:54 陕西
how to break the **Cycle** and not let the Internet become another closed industry? Tim Wu mentioned that each party should play their roles well, i.e government, industry and also the customers.
0 有用 huluhu 2022-05-24 11:56:17
讲述信息产业的迭代颠覆(和垄断)
0 有用 Sheryl 2015-10-30 11:08:54
产品历史而已,养分不多。
0 有用 傲宇 2023-12-18 16:10:54 陕西
how to break the **Cycle** and not let the Internet become another closed industry? Tim Wu mentioned that each party should play their roles well, i.e government, industry and also the customers.
0 有用 猫力刺身 2023-06-11 12:10:27 美国
以后不能盲买书了,我以为是讲互联网信息垄断还有算法之类偏technical那种,当然作者也说了都是以史为鉴
0 有用 huluhu 2022-05-24 11:56:17
讲述信息产业的迭代颠覆(和垄断)
0 有用 镜花 2020-07-13 03:49:31
非常喜欢的一本书。作者梳理了(美国)整个通讯业的历史,从电报,广播,电话,到电视,互联网。。。每一次新技术出现,人们都曾经对它寄予厚望——有的人觉得一个新的时代到来了,人类的未来将会更开放更美好,happily ever after; 但也总有人觉得糟之糕也,人类越来越不像样。。。以及各种不同玩家在里面的博弈,还有一个系统从新生期的开放总是仿佛无可避免走向封闭的过程。非常增加知识,引人思考,而作者... 非常喜欢的一本书。作者梳理了(美国)整个通讯业的历史,从电报,广播,电话,到电视,互联网。。。每一次新技术出现,人们都曾经对它寄予厚望——有的人觉得一个新的时代到来了,人类的未来将会更开放更美好,happily ever after; 但也总有人觉得糟之糕也,人类越来越不像样。。。以及各种不同玩家在里面的博弈,还有一个系统从新生期的开放总是仿佛无可避免走向封闭的过程。非常增加知识,引人思考,而作者的文笔还时不时带出一两句哲思的话。很棒的阅读体验。 (展开)
0 有用 激动如胖大海 2020-05-28 21:59:12
Tim Wu真的是个很吸粉的学者。干货就不说了,写论文的遣词造句都能从他的文章和书里学到很多。这本书调研广泛、通熟易懂、逻辑自洽,这么受欢迎不是没有道理。严格从法学特别是反垄断法而言,有点simplistic and overreaching; but as the work of a leading Brandeist, 另当别论