Tim Wu Archives — LIRNEasia


Life cycle of information industries

Posted on December 11, 2010  /  2 Comments

Tim Wu, the originator of the net neutrality concept has written a book about the big picture of information industries. An excerpt from the review by the New York Times Economics Editor: AT&T is the star of Wu’s book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls “the cycle.” “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “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.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew.