Thursday January 5, 1 - 2 pm: Tim Wu and The Master Switch -- Who Gets to Control the Internet?

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Midday 01.05.2012 2nd HOUR Communication Tec .mp3

Virtual monopolies have come to rule our communications technologies over the last century. Could the Internet be ruled by one corporate giant that controls the flow of information across the country and around the world? That is the big question we'll discuss with Tim Wu, the professor at Columbia Law School who came up with the term “net neutrality” in a research paper 10 years ago. Wu is former chairman of the media reform organization Free Press, a regular contributor to Slate and author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, just out in paperback. This history of modern communications covers phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All such technologies, Wu argues, go through a cycle: "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.”