It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the
American information industry--from the telephone to radio to film--once
existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs
and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however,
grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this path-breaking
audiobook, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could
the Web--the entire flow of American information--come to be ruled by a
corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"?
Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today's great information
powers--Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T--Wu uncovers a
time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry
begets empire. He shows how a battle royal for the Internet's future is
brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out.
"Fascinating, balanced, and rigorous--a tour de force." --The New York
Review of Books
"Entertaining.... There's a sharp insight and a surprising fact on
nearly every page of Wu's masterful survey." --The Boston Globe