The Master Switch

Tim Wu argues that every American information industry, from the telephone to film and radio, began open and chaotic and was later captured by a monopoly or cartel, often with government approval. He describes a recurring pattern in which invention leads to industry and industry to empire, typically stifling free expression and technical innovation. Wu applies that history to the maneuvers of Apple, Google and a resurgent AT&T, and asks whether the internet, now carrying nearly all media, could come under the control of one company holding the master switch. The book mixes industrial exposé with an inquiry into freedom in the information age. Fortune and The New Yorker each named it a book of the year.

Seth Godin said it stayed with him, calling it a high-level analysis of how changes in media reshape culture and the structure of industry.