The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

This is simply an amazing book.

I have always assumed that the information industries I grew up with and learned to love (television, cinema, radio) as well as the humble telephone were liberating technologies. That the sheer innovative and transformative nature of these inventions was the result of unfettered applied science seeding a further wave of unfettered innovative and transformation.

How wrong I was. Not only does Tim Wu shattered my rather thinly-based assumptions with this excellent history of these industries, he does so with the backward-looking eye of someone (like many of us) concerned about the future of the internet given what has happened to its predecessors.

Basically Wu draws a short but effective picture of the critical milestones of each of the major information industries in (but not limited to) the U.S.A. It starts as a heady journey of the early days of the telephone and its battles with the dominant telegraph monopoly and pretty soon soon descends into a compelling but awful recounting of how wave after wave of technology has been captured by the petty, corrupt, myopic and fearful actors from science, industry, politics and even the arts.

Essentially the parable is one of innovation enslaved by self-interest. I shan’t ruin so many of the examples so wonderfully researched and recounted by the author. However I will never again wonder why seemingly simple improvements to technology or services I use everyday seem to take forever to arrive.

As well as an amazing look back at the battles of the 20th century in one of its major theatres (information), Wu offers an unnerving look at the real face of American ‘free enterprise’, where a good idea, great invention and hard work is no guarantee of success, in fact quite the opposite. At a time when America falls back heavily on its place as the land of the free, this book gives the lie to that myth. It has been, in fact, the land of control, stasis, monopoly and censorship.

(If you want to read the history of that other 20th century theatre of war – oil – I strongly recommend The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin.)

As mentioned, Wu’s stories may be in the past, but his concern is what warnings these hold for the future, especially for the internet.

There is plenty of ink (html) being used up about the future of the internet. Many of the better books are technical, some are political, Wu’s is historical. His is the most powerful. The robust optimism that the internet community has for the future of what is essentially a science experiment gone wild seems badly misplaced if the tales in this book are anything to go by.

Other technology with more purposeful creators and users have fallen foul of the ability of industry and government to control, limit or simply starve what it feels threatened by. Why would the most profoundly powerful information platform of all time be any different?

I hope Wu will not be updating this book in years to come with the internet as another sad chapter in a liberating technology handcuffed to the wheel of state.