Fresh from the Oven: Tim Wu. The Master Switch.

Another book I saw at the front non-fiction table was Tim Wu's The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Tim Wu, better know by coining the term Net Neutrality, traces the history of media monopolies such as AT&T from the invention of an isolated individual in tune with the latest technological advances provoking the genesis of a cultural or communication empire such as telephone, radio broadcast or film in Part I; to the consolidation and exclusion practices with state support of these empires in Part II;  to the breaking apart of these empires by a new disruptive technology (such as the Internet) or anti-monopoly measures in Part III; to the reconstitution of the shattered powers in uncannily similar fashion or in the guise of conglomerates in Part IV. Tim doesn't hide his enthusiasm and love for the wave of information utopianism that the Internet brought about at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. We still have to see is the new Internet giants are going through the same stages of the Cycle, from freedom fighter rebels, to monopoly octopus, to shattered information plankton, to reconstituted conglomerates.