The Master Switch

I just started reading The Master Switch by Tim Wu and I'm already really excited about it.  Wu explains in the introduction his idea of "the Cycle."  Basically, throughout the 20th Century, new information technologies were created and a utopian, optimistic view of how the innovation could affect the future follows. 

After a while, the flaws and limitations of the invention are revealed, and consumers are disappointed.  A mogul then comes along and takes control, improving but also monopolizing the industry.  This happened with AT&T with the telephone industry, NBC and CBS with radio broadcasting, Hollywood studios with film, and others.  Often government organizations aided in this monopolization, like the Federal Communications Commission helped NBC and CBS shape the television industry.

Over time, however, these monopolies are broken up.  It can be caused by a new innovation coming along, or, ironically, by the federal government which had actually aided in centralizing the industry.  The internet is a huge example of an innovation that disrupted several industries, opening up communication lines that had been closed and controlled for so long.

When you control the mail, you control... INFORMATION!

Unfortunately, the Cycle inevitably restarts with whatever innovation it was that decentralized communication.  Wu points out AT&T's uncanny ability to come back again and again and monopolize new industries.  No matter how amazing or promising the invention, information technologies always get caught up in the Cycle and someone takes sole, or nearly sole charge of it.  And those who own the industries control information.  Wu quotes Fred Friendly of CBS and says, "Before any question of free speech comes the question of 'who controls the master switch.'"  Wu further explains, "We sometimes treat the information industries as if they were like any other enterprise, but they are not, for their structure determines who gets heard."

Wu's concern is that the internet as we know it, open and wild and full of free speech, will eventually fall into this same Cycle.  If one corporation has control of the internet, the information we consume will be filtered.  He states, "It is an underacknowledged truism that, just as you are what you eat, how and what you think depends on what information you are exposed to."  By the way, I just want to point out that that totally goes along with my Tweethis.  Anyway, when there's a monopoly on a communication industry, the consumers will have their minds changed due to the information they are given.  We need a decentralized, open internet to allow people to get the truth.  Otherwise, the person who controls the master switch will also control our society because they will control our information and therefore what we think.

I'm a little more accepting of openness now.