Me TBR list got unmanageably long. It came from a rather depressive period of my life when the interent was repleat with listeicles – a concept I have come to hate despite finding the word itself to be irresistably funny – that convinced the reader that they somehow weren’t good enough untill they had gone out and either purchased or consumed something. I am guilty for falling for this worst case of this, and amassed the TBR list in this manner.
Among the list was several books from some tech journalism blog, probably from a slow news day. It had books like the garbage-fire “the age of Em“, which I am still angry about having read. I was ready to discard the whole damn list, but Cory Doctorow name drops Tim Wu (in a positive way) in “Enshitification”.
So here we are.
The Master Switch goes into the suprisingly complicated history of monopolies in the information industry, and how these industries are somewhat prone to being dominated by monopolies. It levels pretty damning accusations at a lot of these companies, and isn’t afraid to lay bare when these companies didnt play fairly, and how much they relied on being able to outgun their competitors in the courtroom by having the financial means to pay for legal wars of attrition. Particularly fascinating for me is the explanation Wu gives about why so many movies seem suck these days – production companies aren’t interested in telling good stories, they are interested in having and holding IP linked to merchandising rights. That to me feels pathetic, and worthy of ridicule. When I started this, I was for some reason expecting an apologia of the industry and their monopolistic tendencies. I am over the moon that I got the opposite.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. Tim Wu worked for the Obama administration which while at least left leaning, was still a modern American administration – meaning that it was far too business friendly. I am trying to remember some things about that time, and of course I cannot remember exactly what policies were passed, much less the policies that effect the internet. American policies, especially policies regarding things like the internet, often had ripple effects for us Europeans, which is something that is still happening mostly because so much of the internet is controlled by American based companies. Europe as an entity needs to understand that, especially in these politically tumultuous times, we need more independence not only from the political US, but also from the corporate US.
I like Wu. I will be reading his other books.
Failures in Polymathy 