The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

History shows a typical progression of information technologies: from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel—from open to closed system.

Here we see a rift that will appear in virtually every information industry, the fault line between the virtues of centralized and of decentralized decision making, between the imperative to produce at scales that justify production costs and the desire for variety.

We sometimes treat the information industries as if they were like any other enterprise, but they are not, for their structure determines who gets heard. It is in this context that Fred Friendly, onetime CBS News president, made it clear that before any question of free speech comes the question of “who controls the master switch.”

In an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship.