Master Switch, The

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