the master switch the rise and fall of information empires

Is the dominance of past empires disrupted because of technological change, sluggishness and inertia, or laws and policies? Wu does not really engage with those deeper questions at an abstract level. Is the cycle inevitable, or is it something that we can shape and control through public intervention? While Wu emphasizes the urgency of that question, he fails, as far as I can tell, to seriously engage with it.

Do we get more controlled, closed, concentrated information empires because of some special, inherent economic characteristics of information industries or because of bad policy decisions at critical junctures? His book could be used to give both answers. As far as I can tell, Wu does not have a systematic explanation or theory as to what drives it. Wu's elaboration of the Cycle is intriguing but under‐conceptualized. He traces the cycle's operationthrough telegraph, telephony, radio, film, television, cable TV, media conglomerates and the internet. Wu's historical narrative is held together by the concept of “the Cycle.” The Cycle refers to “the oscillation of information industries between open and closed,” their movement from “somebody's hobby to somebody's industry from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel ” (p. This failure does not become fully apparent until the last chapter, which makes the letdown all the more jarring. Ultimately, it fails to deliver conceptual and analytical insights commensurate with its grand scope. But the book is also a big disappointment. No other book that I know of takes us so effortlessly through 150 years of change and equilibrium in the telecommunication, media and information industries with an eye for the entertaining anecdote and the enlivening detail. In many ways, The Master Switch fills a valuable niche in the literature on communication‐information policy. The title comes from a pungent quotation from Fred Friendly, where “master switch” refers to the ultimate form of gatekeeping or access control. Tim Wu, a law professor at New York's Columbia University, is the man who popularized the term “network neutrality.” In The Master Switch, he provides a lucid, stimulating and easy‐to‐read romp through the history of US communication industries – or, as he puts it more colorfully in the subtitle, The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

The master switch the rise and fall of information empires