The Master Switch
by Tim Wu
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Wu traces a recurring cycle in information industries: open systems get consolidated by monopolists, then disrupted again. From telephone to internet, the pattern threatens every medium.
- Published:
- Pages:
- 384
In the Conversation
In this collection, The Master Switch references 1 other book and is cited by 4 other books.
It draws on The Innovator's Dilemma.
It’s picked up by The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy and Who Owns the Future? and 1 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
What The Master Switch Draws On
1The books Wu references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Wu uses Christensen's sustaining vs disruptive framework for information industries.
What Other Authors Say About It
4The exact passages where other authors bring up “The Master Switch” and what they take from it.
Wu's The Master Switch provides the infrastructure-control framework Sanger extends into the cyberweapons era, treating network chokepoints as both vulnerability and offensive target
Wu's The Master Switch is a direct intellectual ancestor Taplin cites for the argument that information industries cycle between openness and monopoly
Wu's The Master Switch supplies the information-industries cycle theory Lanier extends to argue that platform consolidation recapitulates earlier communications monopolies
Extends Wu's historical analysis of information monopolies in The Master Switch to the algorithmic era, showing how platform personalization creates new forms of invisible gatekeeping
Intellectual Lineage
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Influenced (2 layers deep)
Directly cited by
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Unexpected Connections
Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.
Loonshots
Safi Bahcall
businessscience1 shared
Running Lean
Ash Maurya
businessentrepreneurship1 shared
The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Steve Blank
businessentrepreneurship1 shared
The Innovator's DNA
Jeff Dyer
businessinnovation1 shared
Disrupt Yourself
Whitney Johnson
businessself-help1 shared
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
business1 shared
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The Innovators
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2 shared citations
The Everything Store
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2 shared citationsLoonshots
Safi Bahcall
1 shared citation
The Lean Enterprise
Jez Humble
1 shared citationCitation Network
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