Master Switch

* Book: Tim Wu. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.. 2010

Description

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

"Interested in where the internet was headed, Columbia law professor Tim Wu sought an answer in the history of information technologies. He discovered that in the last 150 years, the telegraph, telephone, movies, radio and television each followed a distinct cycle. And that cycle, as he argues in his new book The Master Switch (2010) , predicts that the openness of the internet will soon be no more.

For anyone thrilled at the wide-open freedom of the Internet, the inevitable question is how long can it last? Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School, looks to history for the answer, and the answer is, not very long, unless we actively intervene. He sees a cycle in the evolution of all the other great information technologies of the last 150 years - the telegraph, the movies, radio. They start out wild and wooly until they are tamed and caged by men who would be emperors.

Their empires, monopolies like AT&T and the early TV networks, wielded extraordinary power over the delivery and often the content of the information all of us received, a power described by a CBS executive in the 1950s as, quote: "the exclusive custody of the master switch".

In his book, called The Master Switch, Tim Wu describes the cycle that transforms a technological revolution into a monopoly. Consider the telephone. What started as a promising but buggy invention by Alexander Graham Bell turned into a juggernaut in the hands of empire builder Theodore Vail." (http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2011/01/master-switch.html)

Review

David Siegfried:

"A veteran of Silicon Valley and professor at Columbia University, Wu is an author and policy advocate best known for coining the term net neutrality. Although the Internet has created a world of openness and access unprecedented in human history, Wu is quick to point out that the early phases of telephony, film, and radio offered similar opportunities for the hobbyist, inventor, and creative individual, only to be centralized and controlled by corporate interests, monopolized, broken into smaller entities, and then reconsolidated. Wu calls this the Cycle, and nowhere is it more exemplary than in the telecommunications industry. The question Wu raises is whether the Internet is different, or whether we are merely in the early open phase of a technology that is to be usurped and controlled by profiteering interests. Central in the power struggle is the difference between the way Apple Computer and Google treat content, with Apple attempting to control the user experience with slick products while Google endeavors to democratize content, giving the user choice and openness. This is an essential look at the directions that personal computing could be headed depending on which policies and worldviews come to dominate control over the Internet. " (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/01/wu)

Interview

"BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you say that American culture in general seems to acknowledge that political power needs to be curbed, but there's a resistance to the notion that economic power needs to be curbed.

TIM WU: Yeah, we do have a big, powerful federal government but we are constantly asking whether it needs to be less powerful, rolled back, what its limits are.

In contrast, the American attitude towards private power, while it has its moments, is much more forgiving. We allow, when we have a massive economic crisis like we just had, we say, well, that's just kind of the way it works instead of doubting our fundamental approach to these things.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you suggest that these times and this new technology calls for something you call "the separations principle".

TIM WU: We need a sensitivity towards over-consolidation between the people who move information and the people who create it. The, the point is that when you have an over-consolidation of transporting content you can have an influence over politics. You can end up with private censorship. You can end up with suppression of new innovation. And I think we need a principle like separation of church and state, where we say, you know, these are nice institutions but they need to retain some distance.

If, for example, Verizon and Google get too close together, if AT&T and Facebook want to become a single company, there are dangers from that.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What would the dangers be?

TIM WU: What would the dangers be? So Google and AT&T merging would result in a world in which it would be almost impossible to displace Google as the nation's dominant search engine. It could insulate itself against competition even after it had become antiquated or, or lost its edge, and it could also begin to favor certain companies over others on its search and would have a power over what Americans hear that would be close to unprecedented in American life.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay, so you suggest that the separations principle requires three active sets of participants, first, the federal government, then the entertainment, information and technology companies -

TIM WU: Right.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: - and then us.

TIM WU: The federal government has to provide some oversight of this, but most important of all, I think it is essential that it is a norm, that we see this as something that is dangerous, that we understand in history this has produced problems, because we're used to, on the Internet, the idea you can reach anything you want. That is the separations principle in action.

Now, over the summer when the news leaked that Google and Verizon had done a secret deal there was a lot of outrage. And I think that that shows that the public is sensitive to these sorts of issues." (http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2011/01/master-switch.html)

Author Bio

"Tim Wu is a policy advocate, a professor at Columbia Law School, and the chairman of media reform organization Free Press. Wu was recognized in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in 2007 Wu was listed as one of Harvard’s 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine." (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2011/01/13/tim-wu-on-the-master-switch-audio/)

More Information

1. Audio: Tim Wu on the Master Switch [1]