Telephones, radio, TV and cinema all progressed from anarchy to monopoly control. In The Master Switch, Tim Wu ask whether the net will too
EARLY in the 20th century, American ranchers seeking contact with their neighbours configured their barbed-wire fences into primitive telephone networks. Often connecting only a handful of farms, the so-called “squirrel lines” were the butt of jokes at the Bell company – the nation’s telephone monopoly – until Bell realised that rural communities were potentially lucrative markets. At first the monopolists attempted to take over by attacking the farmers’ equipment. Then Bell came up with a more…
