Ellenbogen began work on a six-month study of media, an industry he knew little about. The goal was to compress 20 years of history into four A4 pages. The work led him to two conclusions. First, cable networks were the only exceptional businesses in media. Second, the closed system that made them exceptional was ending. The broadband... See more

Everything that has occurred in Silicon Valley in the last couple of decades also occurred in the 1850s. Anyone who thinks that wild-ass high tech venture capitalism is a late-20th-century California phenomenon needs to read about the maniacs who built the first transatlantic cable projects. The only things that have changed since then are that the... See more