NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet-the entire flow of American information-come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.Īs Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century-radio, telephone, television, and film-was born free and open.

With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel.

The master switch by tim wu