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

Theodore Newton Vail, born July 16, 1845, was a U.S. telephone industrialist. His philosophy of using closed systems, centralized power, and as much network control as possible, in order to maintain monopoly power, is what’s come to be known as Vailism. He served as the president of American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) between 1885 and 1889, and again from 1907 to 1919 (the company was named “American Telephone & Telegraph” before 1894). Vail convinced President Woodrow Wilson that the telephone as a medium of communication would spread more rapidly if brought under one monopoly, so as to ensure uniform provision of services throughout the country. He called this "one system, one policy, universal service."

“Mr. Vail is a big man.”

- Thomas Edison

According to Columbia University, professor and policy advocate Tim Wu (Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium: the master switch. Tim Wu chronicles the turning points of the century’s information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Tim Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. He advocates not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy—between those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access—and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a Separations Principle would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. The Tim Wu book is engaging, a remarkable historical narrative that makes for a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity—and necessary deregulation—in the information age.

“History shows a typical progression of information technologies: from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel—from open to closed system.”

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

“Wireless is going to be a big problem because as these smart phones develop into more complex devices, I think the consumers will expect the same kind of experience on their wireless device than they expect on their wired connection at home. There may be a performance difference, but you wouldnt expect that you would be told you cant use certain applications.”

- Scott Jordan, professor at the University of California at Irvine

In December 2010, David Leonhardt wrote “From Hobby to Industry” for The New York Times. AT&T is the star of the new Tim Wu book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls “the cycle.” “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew. The Master Switch covers the history of phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All of these businesses are susceptible to the cycle because all depend on networks, whether they’re composed of cables in the ground or movie theaters around the country. Once a company starts building such a network or gaining control over one, it begins slouching toward monopoly. If the government is not already deeply involved in the business by then (and it usually is), it soon will be. Tim Wu argues that the government has little choice. Not only are communications businesses particularly prone to consolidation, but the political effects are far greater than they would be in other industries. The Tim Wu book’s title comes from a line by Fred Friendly, the longtime CBS News executive, in which he distinguished between free-speech laws and “exclusive custody of the master switch.” They are two different things, but either has the ability to shape the flow of information. The same cannot be said, Tim Wu notes, “of orange juice, heating oil, running shoes or dozens of other industries, no matter their size.”

“The reason people like Google or Facebook is it's just simpler. If we go back to AT&T in the 1910s, we had a monopoly for 70 years, and why was that? It was easy—you picked up the telephone, and it worked. There's nothing wrong with that. But our desire to follow the leader does tend to lead to monopolization.”

- Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books)

Tim Wu: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires from Forum Network | Soapbox Podcast Podcast

Tim Wu, policy advocate, expert on copyright and communications, and creator of the phrase "net neutrality", talks about his book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.

Download the podcast here. There's a pairing with Tim Wu; see that pairing here. On the note of couplings and pairings, check out this Blogging Heads debate; it's enlightening, if not entertaining. Sarah Lacy said this on her TechCrunch page:

In this longer debate on bloggingheads.tv, Wu raises a few good counter arguments that concern him about the industry’s future. And they hit home because they are two things I worry about too: Silicon Valley’s increasing reliance on acquisitions for exits and apps running on top of platforms like the iPhone and Facebook for distribution. We also talk about the distinction between the computer Web and the mobile Web when it comes to openness.

Check that TC page here. We might as well mention Lacy's book; it's more interesting to outsiders of the Valley that want to "get in" than any other sort of reader: Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

The Rise and Fall of Information Empires from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-12-13 12:00:00] Who actually owns the internet and all the information that flows freely on the world-wide-web? We'll explore issues surrounding net neutrality this hour with Tim Wu, the Columbia Law Professor and policy advocate who coined the term. His new book is "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires" (Knopf, 2010).

Download the podcast here. See also: Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World

"The Master Switch": Is the Internet due for a takeover? - from Slate.com - by Laura Miller

In "The Master Switch," Wu assembles all of these stories and reframes them as battles in a shifting landscape of high-stakes industrial warfare, from Ma Bell's dastardly campaigns against small independent phone companies to the conquest of every aspect of the movie industry -- from talent and production to distribution and theaters -- by the ruthless moguls of the studios' heyday. He scrutinizes the postwar years when AT&T was treated like a shadow agency of the federal government, and recounts how the Machiavellian head of RCA, David Sarnoff, double-crossed an idealistic old friend to suppress the introduction of FM radio (a technology whose capabilities have yet to be fully explored) for decades. These industries -- "the defining business ventures of our time," according to Wu -- "have from their inception been subject to the same cycle of rise and fall, imperial consolidation and dispersion." Furthermore, "the time has come when we must pay attention" because we are now, with the Internet, "on the high end of a pendulum arc that, so far, has always begun to swing in the opposite direction -- toward greater control and centralization." And while Wu strives for balance, acknowledging that monopolies can provide seamless service, efficiency, high-quality content and sometimes even lower prices, his heart is clearly with the wild and woolly (if also sometimes scruffy) nature of the wide-open model that currently abides online.

Read Miller's article at the Slate, here. David Leonhardt at The New York Times' Sunday Book Review, also covered the book the other day:

It was one of the more extraordinary instances of Ma Bell’s involvement with Uncle Sam. The company owed its very existence to a favorable federal patent ruling in 1878, which saved it from an early death at the hands of Western Union, the dominant telegraph company then trying to crush its new rival. A little more than a century later, Washington broke up AT&T. But regulators soon allowed many of the company’s parts to merge back together. This consolidation, Tim Wu argues in “The Master Switch,” probably allowed the Bush administration to conduct its wiretapping program in secret for so long. AT&T is the star of Wu’s book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls “the cycle.” “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew.

Read that New York Times article, here. Also, a couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post sat down with the author, and offered this introduction to the author:

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University, author of the (excellent) new book "The Master Switch" and chairman of the board of Free Press. Oh, and he coined the term "net neutrality" in 2003. He spoke with me from Canada, where he's promoting his book, about the net neutrality rules that Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, outlined this week. A lightly edited transcript follows.

The interview focused on the issue of net neutrality. Read a partial transcript of that interview at the Washington Post. The Atlantic also covered the author, the issue of net neutrality, and his book (of course):

What Faulkner once said about the American South -- "The past isn't dead. It's not even past" -- is now true of tech and telecom policy as well. The perennial Great Divide in tech policy is about the merits of applying existing regulatory models to the latest technology. The question of the moment is about whether and how government should regulate Internet broadband. And the debate is now roaming into lessons-from-history thanks to a fascinating new book, The Master Switch, by Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School.

Pair Tim Wu with Gerald Sussman. Sussman is a bit more academic, in terms of reading. The book we're suggesting here, "Communication, Technology, and the Politics in the Information Age," can come off as heavy reading over the weekend. It's often assigned at media and sociology of science and technology courses at universities. Sussman is a friend of some of our editors, and a professor to others of ours. But other than that, and the pennies we get in affiliate income from "the bookstore," we're pairing Sussman because in this title in particular, you have something of a Michael Pollan about technology and industrial science here; that is to say, you're presented with a narrative context, enveloped in economics, statistics, historical facts, events, dates, about momentous waves and social patterns in Sussman; and you get this with the more contemporary take, by Tim Wu. It pairs a bit heavy to the academic side, but as is the case with most heavily academic pairings, it's a couple of titles that you can languish over, that you can reread, and reference over and over again, through the years. That's incredibly difficult to say about texts these days, that cover such pertinent, current, and relevant issues as net neutrality and public policies about technology and industrial sciences. See Wikipedia's take on Gerald Sussman, here.